About August Jackson

Contact August

E-mail: august at augustjackson dot net

Professional Biography

August Jackson is a competitive intelligence and strategy professional who focuses on the role of information technology and data as the basis for competitive advantage. He is the Senior Director of Market and Competitive Intelligence at Deltek, an enterprise software company that delivers software and solutions to project-focused organizations.

Prior to Deltek, August spent 6 years at the Big Four firm Ernst & Young LLP, guiding the organizations’ senior leaders on the impacts of digital transformation and technology’s transformative impact on professional services and accounting and the basis of competitive differentiation. August spent over 10 years in the telecommunications industry in marketing and competitive intelligence roles with British Telecom, AT&T and Verizon. He has also worked with government agencies to apply commercial intelligence methods and technology to government intelligence challenges.

August is a recognized expert in applying emerging technologies to business and intelligence practices. August is a past chair of the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals and has contributed to the profession with his writing, presentations and workshops on topics including scenario analysis and social media.

August received his BA in International Affairs from George Washington University and MBA from the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Media Quotes

Whoever my audience is, I always assume their time and attention is a lot more important than mine. I’m going to put in the time and the effort to think, ‘what is the best way I can communicate this to this particular person?’ I try to get as individual as possible.

Competitive Intelligence Spotlight, ArchIntel October 2020

The biggest challenge today is making sense of all of the information that we have available to us. The fundamental challenge for CI switched in the early 2000s from a model of information scarcity to information abundance. Search engines, online news, RSS, social media, and big data all contribute to the overwhelm. Cutting through it all and making sense is the state of the art.

Competitive Intelligence Spotlight Series, Crayon 29 October 2019

August Jackson, a market intelligence analyst at Ernst Young (formerly at Verizon), says he wants his co-workers to talk up their work, just not “specifically what they’re working on today.” But he’s more than happy to take advantage of those making this mistake at other companies. He steadfastly follows competitors’ executives and employees on Twitter and LinkedIn. “And I’m really happy that Google+ recently added a search function,” he adds.

“The Spy Who Liked Me,” Forbes 02 November 2011

You can reveal hidden pages by doing Google searches such as: “filetype: doc site: companyname,” says August Jackson, a senior competitive intelligence analyst for Ernst & Young in McLean, Va. http://www.ey.com/ Change the file type to .pdf, .xls, or .ppt to turn up data or presentations. “It’s surprising how many companies put this information up and think, ‘If I don’t link to it, no one will find it,'” Jackson says. You also can view the site’s source code to see the meta-tags or key words being used to optimize its position in searches.

“12 Ways to (Legally) Spy on Your Competitors,” Entrepreneur 18 November 2011.