Posted in CI
Tagged competitive intelligence, marketing research, big data, semantic web
Today I had the pleasure to talk with the Special Libraries Association‘s Competitive Intelligence Division on tricks and Internet tools to use to research private companies. I always really enjoy presenting to SLA audiences because they are so engaged and tend to teach me new tricks.
Here are the slides from that presentation. I know the CI Division will have replay details shortly. For anyone who has information they would like to add to the discussion or questions they would like to ask please feel free to do so in the Comments to this blog entry.
If you have a moment, please head over to the South by Southwest Panel Picker and cast a vote for my session proposal “Predicting the Future of the Semantic Web” at this link: http://bit.ly/nGMf6a.
We will be developing a scenario analysis capturing the specific drivers and inhibitors of semantic technologies that will shape the future of this platform. We’ll also describe the disruption that semantic technologies will bring to the media, telecommunications and other industries.
Even if you’re not planning on coming to SxSW but would like to see this session please cast a vote. I promise that, if selected for SxSW 2012 I will hold this session as a webinar sometime after the conference.
I’m absolutely pissed at Wells Fargo and Intuit right now!
You’ll have to excuse me that all professionalism has fled from me as I write this. I have just come through a painful migration not of my choosing. Confusing decisions by Wells Fargo and Intuit have eaten a significant portion of my weekend and cost me $60 to purchase new software. After all of this I am still not made whole. I’m not sure I will ever be.
For many years I have been a Wachovia checking customer. As you probably know Wachovia was one of the banks that didn’t make it through the mortgage meltdown of 2008 and was acquired by Wells Fargo. The transition of the Wachovia franchise to Wells Fargo has been a relatively slow, state-by-state process. Recently the Commonwealth of Virginia made the switch. All of my accounts have been transitioned from Wachovia to Wells Fargo. This includes digital access to my account information.
I have also been a long-time user of Intuit’s personal money management software. In 2008 Intuit chose to no longer update Quicken for the Macintosh and rather introduced a lightweight application called Quicken Essentials. It seemed odd at the time that the team at Intuit would choose to basically downgrade a computer platform on a strong ascendency with an attractive user base. But Quicken Essentials was Good Enough™. I was able to download transactions for all of my checking, savings and credit card accounts– including my Wachovia accounts. So I cast caution to the wind, moved my data over and continued along with Quicken Essentials.
Last weekend Wells Fargo pulled the switch on moving the Wachovia customer base in Virginia over to Wells Fargo. Imagine my surprise to find that Wells Fargo does not allow users to automatically download their transaction records to Quicken Essentials. Quicken? Yes. QuickBooks? Yes. But Quicken Essentials? No.
Since there is no longer a Quicken for the Mac, Wells Fargo is effectively telling their customers who happen to own and use Macintosh computers that they are second class. Oh, sure, there is a kludge whereby you can download a transaction file and manually upload your account details to Quicken Essentials, but the process is a pain compared to the single button click update I enjoyed as a Wachovia customer.
Wachovia supported this function. Other banks large and small support this function. But not Wells Fargo. Why not? I haven’t been able to find a satisfactory answer. Most of the forums I review suggest that Wells has asked Intuit not to allow this access. The only reason I can imagine is that there is some smal IT overhead to support this access. I can’t really imagine what that is, but I don’t believe asking a major bank to do what it takes to deliver these table stakes is asking too much. My small local bank that owns my business account offers full access via Quicken Essentials. If the inky-dinky local bank can do it the mighty Wells Fargo can make it happen. ‘Nuff said.
Upon learning that Wells would not support Quicken Essentials I had to once again swallow hard and move forward. Since I run Parallels on my Mac and have a virtual Windows 7 machine I decided it would be easier to eat the $60 to purchase and install Quicken Deluxe 2011 for Windows on my virtual machine. This is sub-optimal considering the slower performance of applications running in a virtual machine. At the time, though, I thought it would still be easier than changing banks.
Intuit, we have a problem!
You cannot believe how extremely surprised I am to learn that Quicken Essentials cannot export files to a format that can be imported by Quicken. Remember in the movie Apollo 13 when the crew had to built a Carbon Dioxide scrubber from scraps, spare parts and a sock because the scrubbers in the command module were incompatible with the scrubbers in the lunar module? Well, Intuit’s approach to file formats makes the Apollo design choices look like… well… rocket science. I can’t even fathom a “Why” for this decision. It’s pure stupidity.
In summary, these two companies have made three decisions of varying impact that never should have been made:
As it stands I’ve spent a significant part of my weekend trying to make a transition that should have taken just a minute or two. I’m worse off as both a bank customer and a software user than I was before the transition happened. I’m out $60. Now I’m in the market for a new bank and a new personal finance application.
I’ve been exploring the potential of Google+, the new social media platform from Google. So far the platform appears to have a lot of potential as a platform for team collaboration and communication. It feels more professional (like Twitter or LinkedIn) than social (like Facebook).
Please feel free to add me to one of your circles there. Here’s my Google+ profile.
If you don’t have an invite yet leave a comment and I will send one to you (while Google lets me).
Next week is the Special Libraries Association (SLA) annual conference in Philadelphia. SLA is always a great program, and I’m excited to be attending the conference again. I’m looking forward to catching up with my fellow CI professionals in the Competitive Intelligence Division and getting to know the folks from the recently created Taxonomy Division.
Monday night is the Competitive Intelligence Division open house. This year the team from Aurora WDC is sponsoring a Pecha Kucha competition. My topic on creating a professional presence on social media was selected.
I’ll be presenting on using Internet resources to research private companies on Tuesday morning as well.
The April 2011 issue of Inc. Magazine included a series of articles on competitive intelligence by Bill Helm. Helm is a senior writer at the magazine and the former marketing editor of BusinessWeek. For many entrepeneurs this is the first and most detailed view of the deliberate practice of competitive intelligence they will see. Overall the articles are a positive for both for the competitive intelligence practice and entrepreneurs. That said, the series did leave some things to be desired. What I will try to do here is to summarize the series and reflect the good, the bad and the ugly.
Here are the links to the individual articles in the series:
The Good
For many if not most entrepreneurs this will be their introduction to the notion that there is a structured practice of understanding competitive market dynamics. Even for those who are familiar with the practice this is likely to be the most detailed look at the practice. If any press being good press, this series constitutes a win right there. My hope is that entrepreneurs will read this article and realize that they need to make systematic competitive intelligence part of their standard business practice. I hope those same entrepreneurs will follow up with some of the excellent CI resources that are out there.
Helm avoided jargon to make CI accessible to entrepreneurs. CI professionals can fall into the trap of diving too quickly into the details of specific collection or analysis practices. The community that has grown up around the practice can also sometimes be infatuated with the cutting edge of analysis or collection, desirous of expensive tools and is often invested in the narcissism of our minor differences. I know I’ve been guilty of this, and I’ve always tried to correct for this tendency by insisting that every presentation I deliver has to give my audience something new they can take away and try right away at no cost.
The series quotes a number of leading thinkers and figures in the field and mentions SCIP as a professional association for CI professionals. It’s clear that Helm interviewed some of the key people in the field, and this lends legitimacy to the material. Helm also interviews entrepreneurs that have used or conducted CI themselves for great value.
Helm clarifies that it’s best to narrow intelligence requirements at the beginning of the process. AMEN! If entrepreneurs or managers takes only one thing away from this series I hope it is the admonish to not say “I need to know absolutely everything about Company X” but to be laser-focused with their intelligence requirements. If CI customers will remember just this one bit of mindfulness they will save themselves a lot of time, a lot of money and avoid needless frustration. This one piece of advice is the key to getting value from competitive intelligence.
The Bad
Despite the fact that I was pleased to see this series of articles, there were some specific aspects that I didn’t like about the series.
While the series did a good job describing some of the basics of CI as a practice, the collection opportunities described came across as being based on serendipity rather than a systematic and often tedious practice.
Grateful as I am for the admonition to focus on specific needs, the description of the CI practice is over-focused on finding specific pieces of information. The modern CI practice is more about interpretation and analysis of information and data flows rather than uncovering that one hidden gems.
It seems that this series, as with all articles about CI, maintains a sheen of cloak and dagger about the practice. There are numerous mentions of former government, military and law enforcement intelligence types involved in CI. The skill sets are applicable across domains, and many of the best intelligence education opportunities are geared towards these communities. The mark of a good CI professional, though, is their ability to analyze and interpret findings to the world of a profit-making business. A government intelligence background does not guarantee a person will possess these skills.
The Ugly (or “What I Would Have Liked to See”)
Many entrepreneurs who read this series will probably want to learn more about CI. I would have liked to see a brief section on where they could go to find more information and a few of the books they could read to learn more. My top web site candidate is the SCIP web site, a great source in itself and useful jumping off point. While a number of books come to mind as best candidates for your first CI read, Seena Sharp’s Competitive Intelligence Advantage is excellent for an entrepreneur to better understand CI.
I thought the series over-emphasized primary research. Some brief descriptions of basic secondary research would have been a strong addition. Some basics on how to examine a competitor’s web site would have been useful. Maybe the feeling was that this sounds too obvious. As obvious as it is, I’m often surprised how much low-hanging secondary fruit is overlooked. Social media in particular offers some very useful opportunities to easily and inexpensively deliver valuable insight.
It would have also been very valuable to illustrate some of the basic analytical frameworks such as SWOT and Porter’s Five Forces. SWOT is very easy to understand and compile, and when done well quickly summarizes the state of the competitors in a market. I know some in the CI profession look down on SWOT. I still find the framework so readily accessible to be a useful with stakeholders.
Finally I would have also like to have seen greater coverage of the issues of legality and ethics. While the articles hints at some of the questions of legality related to activities like dumpster diving, a whole article is devoted to the subject of eavesdropping at trade shows. Richard Horowitz, one of the CI thought leaders and a practicing attorney referenced in the article has asked the question whether or not CI professionals are obsessed with ethics in past presentations at SCIP conferences and local chapters. I agree with Richard that some organizations apply an overly-strict interpretation of ethics that go far beyond the SCIP Code of Ethics for CI Professionals. However, I do believe that CI practices must be far beyond the standards of behavior laid out in the Economic Espionage Act and guided by SCIP’s code (a policy analysis of the act by Horowitz is here in PDF format).
Ethics and Efficacy of Suggested Practices
Some of the specific practices described in this series create concerns for me that some entrepreneurs may engage in activity that at best runs afoul of ethical standards and at worst may violate the Economic Espionage Act or other laws. These practices include posing as customers, eavesdropping and dumpster diving. To my mind none of these practices constitute ethical or acceptable practices for competitive intelligence professionals.
Posing As Potential Customer
Houston-based Private Investigator J.J. Gradoni is quoted as saying. “I will pose as a potential customer and ask questions about a company’s pricing structure, how fast they ship, turnaround time, number of employees, and so forth. Then I ask for references. I call those people as well.” My interpretation is that this is a wholly unethical practice and very possibly violates some of the specific prohibitions against misrepresentation in the Espionage Act. If any practicing CI professional were exposed engaging in any such behavior I can only hope they would rightly be raked over the coals. Likewise for any executives or managers on whose behalf such a practice were employed.
Dumpster Diving
The series does touch on some examples of the damage to a reputation that can come from having been caught dumpster diving, Toledo-based importer Gary Marck is alleged to have been caught pilfering secrets from his competitor’s trash. The competitor used these stories to besmirch Marck’s reputation. Despite this cautionary tale the article hints that under certain conditions dumpster diving can actually be legal. Perhaps that is true, but my interpretation of SCIP’s ethical standards lead me to question this practice. The thought of rummaging through someone’s trash is absolutely disgusting, but now you know why I have a cross-cutting shredder.
Elicitation
I actually enjoyed some of the basic overview of interview and elicitation. The article illustrates some of the basics of appealing to a target’s self interest and summarizes five types of elicitation targets. Quality elicitation requires a lot of up-front research and is very structured. I was really impressed when we had Catherine Foley of CM2 Limited speak about elicitation at the Washington SCIP chapter in 2009.
Encouraging Staff to Participate in Collection
I agree that the task of collection is shared by everyone in the company, and I believe this works best when each role receives guidance that is specific to their standard activities. This training should also address some of the specific ethical and legal concerns for their collection activities.
Trade Show Eavesdropping
The recommendations to engage in eavesdropping at trade shows is one of the more problematic recommendations of this article series. At least as troubling as the ethics are my concerns I have for the efficacy of eavesdropping as opposed to systematic trade show intelligence. Two very useful sources on trade show intelligence are Conference and Trade Show Intelligence edited by Jonathan Calof and Bonnie Hohhof and The WarRoom Guide to Competitive Intelligence by Steve Shaker and Mark Gembicki.
This is a TED talk that I found so inspiring and interesting that I have to share, David Christian describes the 13.7 billion years of history and puts entropy and complexity into such a beautiful context.
There are many things that I want to say about this talk. I’m not sure I can say them without ruining it for you. So I’ll shut up now and just ask you to please do yourself the favor of watching this.
I’ve written before about how much I enjoy using Twitter at conferences for the back-channel discussion. On April 21st at 5 PM EDT / 2 PM PDT we’ll all have our chance to immerse ourselves in the back-channel discussion without a conference. Along with Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart of Cascade Insights I’ll be hosting the first Competitive Intelligence Twitter chat.
A Twitter chat is a scheduled, semi-structured discussion around a given topic or subject using Twitter. Tweets related to each chat are united by the designated hash tag. For our chat that tag is #cichat. At the designated time run a Twitter search for that hashtag to follow along in the discussion. You can find out more about Twitter chats by reading this article. If you like the concept you can see a schedule of other Twitter chats here.
Our first discussion is going to be about how to move requests for CI support from information-oriented requests to decision support. This is a topic near to my heart because I believe this is a key to maintaining the value that CI can deliver for stakeholders. I’ve written about it here. I interviewed Merrill Brenner on his methods for decision-focused CI on the competitive Intelligence Podcast. After our first Twitter chat our tentative plan is to address another CI topic at that same time every week.
My hope is that #cichat will gain momentum and take on a life of it’s own. Seam, Scott and I will move from being like the expert speakers to being more like producers or facilitators. If there is a topic you would like to see addressed, especially a topic on which you would like to take the lead please feel free to let us know.
This week’s Economist has an authoritative briefing “The Leaky Corporation” that reflects some of the same trends I illustrated in my recent blog post “Why Wikileaks Doesn’t Matter.” The article reflects the opinion of several experts and studies that provide more detail and authority to the same issues I raised. It is well worth a read.
augustjackson.net RSS feed Competitive Intelligence Podcast
This blog is offered under a Creative Commons attribution share-alike license.
