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What is Competitive Intelligence - a brief guide

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Effective CI requires local knowledge of

culture,
language and slang,
geography,
information sources,
political and economic situation,
customs

and so on for each country in which the competitor operates.

We can and do find information on companies globally using secondary (published) sources. However in-depth and face-to-face interviewing cannot be done remotely. It requires a local presence, with interviewers familiar with the business customs and hot-topics within the country and with an ability to speak the native language.

(Don't believe anybody who tells you different! It is possible to do research remotely using international telephone calls, or by flying to the foreign destination for on-the-ground research. However you risk getting poor results due to the researcher missing nuances resulting in incomplete intelligence or worse, a wrong interpretation of the information collected. You also end up paying for the so-called expert's travel expenses, and learning curve while they find their way around).

AWARE has linked with a number of other CI and marketing consultancies, giving you access to local CI expertise. This way, we can provide a truly global service where your project or research is handled by in-country experts, and not remotely from several thousand miles away

For projects in a single country, we recommend direct contact with one of our partner companies (we've listed a selection below) who will be happy to give you an estimate for any work. Your contract will be with this company, and not AWARE. We do not charge or receive any fee for referring you to any of our partners. Our links with the companies are based on friendship and a mutual recognition of our joint professionalism and nothing more

For multi-country research you may wish to deal with several local companies, or we can also act as a single-point of contact, handling all the cross-country work for you.

Please contact us if you need more information on any aspect of cross-border research.

Our Key partners

Global	Organization: Global Intelligence Alliance. Location: Global. The Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA) is a worldwide network of professional CI companies and has research partners in all major markets on all five continents. Expertise Offered: Business Research & Analysis, Market surveillance, CI Process consulting, CI technology solutions, benchmarking, and more (depending on individual country research partners). Geographies Served: Global Contact Name: Hans Hedin Tel: + 46 735 340 173

Australasia	Company: Mindshifts Group. Location: Chatswood, NSW. Expertise Offered: CI Analysis, Market analysis, CI Training, Strategic Development. Mindshifts personnel have written numerous papers on CI and led CI training sessions globally. Geographies Served: Australasia and Pacific Rim regions. Contact Name: Babette Bensoussan. (Note: Babette is the author of Strategic and Competitive Analysis describing key CI analysis techniques. She is also well known within the CI community, and one of Australasia's leading CI practitioners).

Germany Austria Switzerland	Company: Reyes Consulting Location: Cologne, Germany and Zurich, Switzerland . Expertise Offered: Competitive intelligence, due diligence, fraud investigations, personality profiling. Team includes engineering, tax, legal and accounting experts. Geographies Served: Western/Eastern Europe. Contact Name: Gloria Reyes. (Gloria is known as an expert on CI within Germany, and German-speaking countries in Europe).

Italy	Company: Strategie & Innovazione Location: Milan. Expertise Offered: Competitive Intelligence primary and secondary research. Market research. Geographies Served: Italy and Italian language research. Contact Name: Miilena Motta. (Milena is a key person within the CI community in Italy)

Southern Africa	Company: CBIA. Location: Lyttelton. Expertise Offered: Information collection, training, business counterintelligence, psychological profiling, geo strategic analysis. CBIA are South Africa's oldest and best established CI consultancy. Geographies Served: Southern Africa Contact Name: Steve Whitehead

USA	Company: Market Analytics International Inc Location: New Jersey. Expertise Offered: Competitive Intelligence, Customer Intelligence, Sales & Marketing Research, Sales Training. Market and Competitor Research. Quantitative Research Analysis. Geographies Served: USA, Global capabilities. Contact Name: Michele McKenna

USA	Company: Business Intelligence Source, Inc. Location: Conifer, Colorado. Expertise Offered: Competitive Intelligence, Customer Intelligence, Sales & Marketing process assessments. Evaluation of opportunities through analysis and research. Strategic planning and business development support. Geographies Served: USA, North America. Contact Name: Ellen Naylor. (Ellen is a key figure in the West Coast & Colorado CI community. She has recently linked with a number of other Colorado CI experts who can be contacted at www.competitive-insight.com.)

Israel	Company: Amcon Marketing Strategy International. Location: Ra'anana, Israel. Expertise Offered: Competitive and market information collection, Strategic partner selection and evaluation, Due diligence research, Technical intelligence services. Export research, especially on US market. US senior personnel recruitment. Geographies Served: Israel, USA Contact Name: Charles Klein. (Charles Klein is an expert on export services to the US. He is the author of a book on exporting to the US and gives regular lectures and seminars on this topic. Contact Amcon for more information on either exporting to the US, or competitive and marketing intelligence on both the US and Israeli markets).

Rest of World	We also have partner companies that can cover research in most countries and regions world-wide. Contact us directly if you need research in countries not covered above - France, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, China, Japan, India, S E Asia, Central & South America, Middle East, Africa, or anywhere else in the world.

If you are interested in becoming an AWARE partner company, please contact us, giving full details on how to contact you, your company background, experience, specialisms if any, and any additional details you feel may be relevant. We will then contact you to discuss becoming a partner, and also to obtain references to verify your professionalism.

AWARE News

Publications / Presentations

Arthur Weiss gave a conference paper on specialist search - finding names, numbers and news at the Online Information 2011 Conference as well as an exhibition seminar giving top tips for finding competitive intelligence online for use in primary reserarch. These can be downloaded on our publications pages. Arthur also led two sessions as part of WebSearch Academy at the Internet Librarian International Conference in October 2011 (Planning your Research & Social Media). (See our presentation & papers pages to download these).

2012 events so far confirmed include the Institute of Competitive Intelligence conference in Bad Nauheim, Germany (March 2012) - a workshop on online competitive intelligence, and a practitioner case study looking at how national cultures can influence primary research efficacy.

Several other workshops are planned - in both Europe and Asia. If you are interested in competitive intelligence training and workshops contact us, or visit our training pages. We offer custom training looking at all aspects of marketing & competitive intelligence including evaluating competitor strategies, online research, marketing research, competitor analysis, scenario planning and much more.

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Competitive Intelligence Training

Do you need to
know more about
Competitive Intelligence?

We offer in-house Competitive Intelligence Training, customised to your requirements.
Find out about our training services today!

Finding Competitive Intelligence using Online Sources

AWARE consultants are experts at discovering competitor information online and have developed a market-leading course on Finding Competitive Intelligence using Online Sources. This course has been given as an in-house course to numerous companies across industries (IT, publishing, telecoms, chemicals....) and countries, as well as publicly at SCIP annual and European conferences, the London International Online Information Conferences and other similar events.

The workshop has received high praise for its unique approach to finding competitive intelligence on the Internet. The workshop - available as a half-day summary, full day or 2-day in-depth training course with extensive practical online sessions - teaches attendees how to find actionable competitive intelligence rather than just present a list of sources that quickly date. Like all AWARE's in-house training, the course can be customised to focus on industry or competitive area.

For more information on this workshop and how it can help you become a more effective Internet researcher check out our Competitive Intelligence Training and ask us about our courses on finding CI information.

Institute of Competitive Intelligence
UK Course Schedule

ICI holds regular public training courses & workshops on a range of competitive intelligence related topics. Courses take place across Europe, the USA and elsewhere. The next UK based ICI courses will take place in November 2010 and February 2011 in central London.

Course Schedule
If you register 40 days in advance, deduct 5% from total fees.

Further information on the Institute of Competitive Intelligence.

Books - Smart Services

Recommended Book

Smart Services: Competitive Information Strategies, Solutions and Success Stories for Service Businesses
Deborah C Sawyer
Buy UK £ or US$

Read our review of this book

The front cover of "Smart Services" includes a quote from Andrew Garvin, the CEO of Find/SVP saying: "Finally a book that nails down what every service business needs to know about competition and competitive intelligence. 'Smart Services' offers competitive information strategies that firms can put to immediate use." I don't think that I could have given a better summary and description of this excellent book.

For a thorough review of this book check out FreePint's book review. (FreePint is an excellent portal site and discussion forum for the overall information industry, and is well recommended - and used by over 70,000 information professionals world-wide).

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For more recommendations visit our book selection.

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Our services in competitive intelligence research, competitor analysis and CI training will help you integrate and use competitive and marketing intelligence in your business, strategic and marketing planning processes. Whether you need research, advice or training, our mission is to support our clients so that they achieve their growth objectives.

For the best UK & European competitive intelligence and competitor analysis services, contact us today.

AWARE Phone numbers: 0845 430 9125 (International: +44 20 8954 9121). Fax: 0845 430 9126 (International: +44 20 8954 2102)

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Last page / site update: Thursday, May 5, 2011

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