An Leadership & Management Division Webinar

February 28 , 2014 Zena Applebaum

@ZAppleCI

applebaumz@bennettjones.com

Using Competitive Intelligence to

Build Leadership Capability

• A Comment on Language for this presentation

• Who is Doing Your Job? • Taking it back

• Why Now?

• What is Competitive Intelligence

• The Intelligence Cycle and Info Pros

• Tools, Deliverables & Analysis Frameworks

• Communication Success

• Fire Fighter to Leader

• What Next?

• Conclusion & Questions

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Agenda

Exercise:

Draw a picture/write a description

– who are you at work?

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Who is Doing Your Job?

Is Google Doing Your Job?

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Is McKinsey Doing Your Job?

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Be:

• Better than Google

• Smarter than McKinsey

• A concise communicator

• A trusted business advisor; and

• Value added CI leader

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How can you take back your job?

Why Now? • “Research” accounts for between 4.9% and 6.7% of the annual

BD/Marketing budget for AmLaw 200 firms. - Benchmarking Law Firm Marketing and BD Strategies 2011. The BTI Consulting Group

• FT/SLA Report: "The Evolving Value of Information Management" (November 2013), The most pressing challenge for many knowledge providers today is a decline in budget, IT investment and headcount. Capital investments in knowledge or information areas are required by the majority of those professionals surveyed, with 58% describing the level of investment in technology and process improvement as too low.

• info pros need to step up now and embrace the power of CI for decision making, a compliment to their librarian/research training = ADD Value

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• What is the Library 2.0?

There is now, more than ever, a need for librarians to be “big picture” people. Sure, there will always be the need for cataloguers, reference librarians and administrative people who keep the day-to-day functioning of the library going, but what we need most are librarians who are visionaries, people who can see where we need to be and outline how to get there. Library directors should be looking at the long-range needs […]and then moving the firm forward. Of course, the future is unknown. Given the economic climate, the volatility of the […] industry and the ever-changing face of […]publishing, it’s impossible to say with certainty what the future will hold. But we do know it will change, and we know that we can direct some of that change by anticipating it, planning for it, working toward it. Surely the Librarian 2.0 will have a feature that will allow forecasting of the future.

http://www.lexisnexis.com/tsg/gov/Best_Practices_2009.pdf

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The Crystal Ball Feature

What is Competitive Intelligence?

“systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing, and managing external information that can affect you.” - www.SCIP.org

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CI Cycle and Breaking Out – Why No Body Puts Info Pros in a Corner

Source: Fuld.com

• Everywhere!

• Proprietary Information • Human Intelligence (vendors, suppliers, clients, sales)

• Databases (subscriptions)

• Publicly available information • Filings

• Newspapers

• Social media

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Where do you find Competitive Intelligence?

The primary role of this position is the efficient mining, development, reporting and use of competitive intelligence (CI) data to help drive the firm’s marketing and business development efforts. Candidate will work in the Business Development Department and report to the CI Manager.

Essential Duties:

• Support business, client, competitive, and market intelligence with complex, on-demand primary and secondary research. Analyze and summarize findings. Develop intelligence reports and briefing documents.

• Support market intelligence and monitoring. Train and assist users in creating marketing environments and news alerts.

• Compile and track CI requests.

• Work with CI manager and BD team to demonstrate ROI on CI.

Specific Requirements:

• Course of study in library or information sciences (MLS or MLIS) strongly preferred. Combination of education in a research-intensive field with relevant work experience will be considered.

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CI Job Description

Steps to Becoming a Trusted Advisor

1. Know your client

2. Anticipate their info/research needs

3. Synthesize & Analyze

4. Tailor communications to your audience needs

5. Market Success….and…

6. Repeat

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• Know your Audience/Client

• Internal clients and external clients

• Strategic Plan

• How does the research request/CI topic fit into the over all company strategy

• Key Competitors

• Overall, by product/service line

• Industry Analysis

• Keep it current, keep it factual

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Know Your Business, Know Your Client

What are the information/intel needs of the C-Suite?

How can/do you provide these?

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Your Client is the CEO/Strategy Director, BD Director

Intelligence (Info Pros) can support C-Suite by developing:

• Current Awareness Monitoring

• RFP Responses

• Early Warning Systems • Retained counsel – legal, financial, M&A (targeting)

• Changed market conditions

• Appointment Notices

• Recruiting Efforts

• Social Media Monitoring

• Feeding Human Intelligence

Keeping information up to date – System Design

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Meeting Client Needs

Opportunity Identification

(Crystal Ball!)

• Customized Portal w/ or w/o analysts

• Automated & annotated newsletters

• Alerts from Databases

• Filings Monitors

Key Developments – Early Warning Indicators • Retained counsel – financial, M&A, advisory

• Changed market conditions

• Appointment Notices

• Recruiting Efforts

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Current Awareness Monitoring

• Perhaps the easiest place to apply traditional CI analysis techniques and elicitation tactics • Win/loss analysis

• SWOT

• Should we pursue?

• Timeline analysis

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RFP Responses - A made for Leadership, CI Story

• Rife spot find qualitative and quantitative data on clients/prospects as well as competitor clients/prospects

• (in an effort to turn the latter into the former)

• Monitor for tone, content, frequency, trending, sentiment

• Big Data can turn into CI Data points (earlier JD)

Develop a system or software or buy a third party platform. Mechanics/data can be easily outsourced of but still requires a heightened knowledge of the firm and its strategy – human touch.

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Media and Social Monitoring

• In an era of information ubiquity, human intelligence sets our organizations apart.

• Libraries can take on a (new) role as central hubs for information can be the hub and spoke for Human Intelligence and Information Collection (CI Cycle)

• Info Pros/Researchers/Librarians can connect the dots between secondary, tertiary and human research, turning it into intelligence.

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Build Internal Networks – Human Intelligence

• Other Researchers –R&D, KM, Market Research

• Accounting Data – P&L, Product Lines

• CRM and other Database(s)

• Syndicated Research

• Subscription Databases

• News Media/Social Media Monitoring & Tools

• Analysis Reference Tools – Analysis Without Paralysis

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Internal Networks & Data Centers

Why you don’t need to be afraid…

We view competitive intelligence analysis as the multifaceted means by which information is interpreted to produce insightful findings (i.e., intelligence) or recommendations for organizational action. Defined as such, we do not view analysis as being solely in the domain of either pure art or science, but as requiring to some degree both of these. We also view analysis as being both a process (i.e., the multifaceted means we defined) and a product (i.e., the interpretation output). Lastly, our definition suggests that analysis must pass the “so what?” test in order to usefully aid decision-making and action-taking.

(http://www.mindshiftsgroup.com/articles/the_farout_method.pdf Fleisher/Bensasson)

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Providing Added Value – Analysis

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Analysis Frameworks & Products

Context. A picture frame. A perspective. A methodology. That’s it, that’s all. Fancy language to explain something we all do inherently each and every day.

Frameworks are universally understood, taught and used throughout the business community but you don’t need a business degree to use them.

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Analysis Framework – TimeLine Analysis

Display events in a chronological and graphical manner to identify important trends and relationships between competitor business activities

• Systematic layout of events related to the key question

• Look for events, trends, patterns, and sequences • Cause & Effect

• List the important events as a chronology

• Array the events for all competitors on the timeline

• Summarize and hypothesize

Timeline Analysis Source: CID July 2012 presentation “Analytical Tools that Deliver Value” Bernaiche/Wergeles

Timeline Template

Timeline for - Healthy/Green/Socially Conscious

The Medium is the Message – Marshall McLuhan

• How you communicate is as important as what what you provide.

• What does the data dump say about your understanding of needs and issues?

• Create a series of CI/Research products that communicate concisely and directly in line with the client needs.

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Communication

Concise Communication is Essential Email/Voice mail

• To the point

• Address specific project(s)

• Ask for a short meeting to discuss if necessary

• Follow Up

Report/Memo/Presentation

• Methodology

• Address key priorities, business drivers, dilemma’s

• Sharp summary – up front

• Possible recommendations

• Provide Opportunity for Next Steps

- page 28

A Report Example

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How do you become a leader and trusted advisor?

Ongoing demonstration of your value by

articulating the intelligence expertise in

relation to your company’s

needs and the support of

the business goals

Ongoing articulation of added value by demonstrating intelligence expertise in relation to company needs and support of the business goals through effective communication. Client specific, anticipated “actionable intelligence” makes for a trusted advisor and is always better than Google or McKinsey.

Fire Fighter to Leader

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Fight fires and keep them out (i.e. anticipate)

Know your business, know

your client

Provide Additional

Value (Analysis)

Ongoing Actionable Intelligence

Professional Associations/Organizations

• SLA-CID • SCIP

• Intel Collab

• AIIP

Professional Development/Education • SLA CID – CE Courses & Sessions

• ICI

• Fuld

• Mercyhurst

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Career Resources

• Hide in plain sight

• Get out and be seen

• Engender trust, and use it for good

• Don’t collect data for data sake – engage the human element

• Join the SLA CID as well!

Thank you and good luck in your CI efforts!

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What’s Next?

• Survey link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/52Q5Q58

• Next webinar: Writing for Publication Speakers: Bruce Rosenstein and Stuart Hales March 19, 2014 2 pm EST

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