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What is Competitive Intelligence - a brief guide

AWARE: UK competitive intelligence consultants offering competitor analysis and research services, competitive intelligence training & workshops and CI and marketing strategy consultancy.

Strategy, Training, Research Services for Competitive & Marketing Intelligence

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AWARE Competitive Intelligence Resources
Free Online Training in CI

A quick search on YouTube and similar video sharing sites will bring up numerous items - but only a few will help the CI practitioner develop skills.

We scan YouTube, Google Video and more for free videos that can help you improve your CI, or give ideas on different approaches that you may not have considered. This page will include some of the better videos which we believe will help your CI practice - and we'll change them every now and then, so come back and see what's new.

Online Competitive Intelligence

Finding information on your competitor's web-site is not difficult if you know where to go. There are a number of sites that can help you gather information that can help you understand what your competitors are doing online. These range from how their site is optimised for search engines, to who links to them - a clue to suppliers, customers and other stakeholders with an interest in the company. This video hightlights several of these tools - and we also cover them as part of our in-house online competitive intelligence training courses. I thoroughly recommend this video. (For more information on the originator, visit Joshua Wexelbaum's site at http://www.scrappybusiness.com)

Spyfu

Spyfu is an online tool that can help you understand what your competitors are doing online - and give clues to how they see themselves offline. It enables you to monitor and measure PPC adverts - and see what keywords your competitors view as important, and how much they are paying for them. This site is also included in the above CI tools video.

Tracking Private Aircraft as a tool for helping predict competitor strategy

Knowing where your competitor's CEO and board are travelling to can sometimes give clues on what they are thinking and what they are doing. Aurora WDC Director of Research, Derek Johnson, explains how to track private aircraft as a competitive intelligence tool for predicting competitor strategy.

We try and keep all links up-to-date. However YouTube and similar video sites frequently change or lose content. Please let us know if you find any dead links, or if you want us to add content onto any of our source pages.

AWARE News

Arthur Weiss comments on ethics case study hosted on competitive intelligence case website.

Arthur Weiss, AWARE's managing director, commented on a recent case study written by Tom Hawes of JT Hawes Consulting LLC. The case study looked at the issues involved when a company obtained proprietary material from a supplier detailing key product development strategies from a major competitor. The commentary looked at the ethical and legal issues involved in using such material as well as the wider issue of how companies should handle CI ethical breaches in general.

Listen to an audio commentary on the case, complementing the written case comments.

(Click here if the audio-slide bar doesn't appear. You may need to wait while the audio loads).

Books - Competitors (Fahey)

Recommended Book

Competitive-Intelligence-in-the-UK
Competitive Intelligence: Gathering, Analysing and Putting it to Work
Christopher Murphy
Buy UK £ or US$

Read our review of this book

If you are interested in learning about competitive intelligence with a UK / European focus then this book is for you. Most books on CI are written by US authors and take a US perspective. They fail to note the significant differences between what is available in the US and Europe and the UK. For example, in the US the US Freedom of Information Act is key for finding a lot of information. Such legislation has only recently been enacted in the UK and the type of information available is more limited. In contrast, financial information is much easier to obtain in the UK than the US. Murphy's book redresses the balance and fills a gap in guiding the CI newcomer on how to gather CI in Europe.

One of the best sections is a detailed examination of the sources and types of financial CI information that can be obtained within the UK. In fact I think this is unique. Of all the CI books I've read - none give anything like the same depth on this crucial topic.

For a thorough review of this book check out FreePint's book review.

For more recommendations visit our book selection.

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: Wednesday, June 9, 2010