Evolving Technology Intelligence into Decision Support

By: Merrill Brenner

SCIP members, log in to download this item.
Not a member? Join SCIP or purchase this item.

The distinction between providing information and providing intelligence to business decision-makers may seem clear in theory, but it blurs in day-to-day business practice. Because corporate competitive intelligence (CI) groups often operate as service groups, their natural tendency is to accept knowledge-related customer requests even when those requests fall outside of the group's scope or areas of expertise.

Internal customers demand to be updated continuously on developments in critical subject areas. In its drive to provide customer service, a CI group may direct considerable but unappreciated effort, pushing repackaged company-internal and secondary information rather than intelligence to its internal customers. It may also fail to recognize that its ability to independently provide intelligence recognized by the customer as uniquely insightful and actionable diminishes as the internal customer's level of subject matter expertise surpasses that of the CI group. These misaligned efforts undermine the CI group's credibility and perceived organizational value.

Whenever practical, facilitating self-service information handling can free the CI group from tasks better left to the internal customer. This runs the gamut from information gathering to interpretation. In this way the CI group can focus instead on more valuable and valued intelligence work.