C OMPETITIVE I NTELLIGENCE I NTRANET P ORTALS
The next big thing for corporations…
Establishing Competitive Intelligence Intranet Portals in large corporations is still at the earliest stage of its adoption- Nevertheless, the rapid growth of companies adopting this technology to meet their intelligence needs, confirms it to be one of the most important developments in establishing a unique Competitive Intelligence solution for numerous businesses.
CI-Experts Inc.
August 2008
Aug. 08
WHAT IS COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE INTRANET PORTAL?
I T IS NOT ENOUGH TO HAVE GOOD INTELLIGENCE ON THE BUSINESS ENVIROMENT AND YOUR COMPETITORS . I T HAS TO BE BROUGHT TO THE ATTENTION OF THE RIGHT EXECUTIVES AND TO
OTHER PEOPLE WHO NEED THAT INFORMATION IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THEIR CORE CAPABILITIES .
Why should we use it…?
The need to move knowledge rapidly throughout the company and to analyze what is happening– has become essential as the need to capture, create, and disperse information and knowledge becomes more vital to firms. The question arises of how best to facilitate this process. By using Competitive Intelligence (CI) intranet portals, firms of all sizes can control their cooperative internal & external knowledge in an effort to create sustainable competitive advantage and to bring significant added value to the firm. To make the right decisions, corporations need an excellent understanding of their competitors' strategies. CI allows the firm to gather information about competitors, the technologies they use, new markets, marketing strategies and future developments of competitors’ products. By using Intranet portals with a special site dedicated to CI purposes – (which are sites based on Internet technology that are placed on private servers within an organization) you can establish a CI system which can assist in the decision making process within the firm.
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KEY CHARACTERISTICS
Technological CI tools which are implemented inside the intranet platform enable employees around the corporation to share information and to build an excellent online source for gathering from internal and external sources, analyzing and managing information about the business environment. Employees located in different locations can share business information in order to make well informed business decisions. Companies that wish to establish an exclusive CI intranet system need to comprehend the fact that there is a need for some elements in order for the system to work properly. These elements include: quality of content, understanding of the importance of knowledge sharing within the company and appropriate technological platform. The CI intranet system will deliver suitable information which is applicable for decision making. The CI analyst should then examine the information using various strategic tools. Only then, will the information be considered a substantial value and endorse competitive advantage. The system should be user-friendly and integrate with the various business divisions within the company.
BENEFITS
There are many benefits in establishing a distinctive CI intranet portal: The system supplies timely and updated information which is reachable to authorized employees within the firm's boundaries, both at the corporate headquarters and the various divisions. The information the system produces is filtered for relevancy using a variety of CI tools. Managers of all fields/divisions get up-to-date information according to what is relevant to their everyday business. The system gives wide search coverage of all information sources relevant to the company’s business. The system is intuitive and has an easy-to-use interface. The system encourages and facilitates contribution of information from the field: sharing both tacit and explicit knowledge of the business environment more efficiently.
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The system raises the status and recognition of CI inside an organization, and assists in strategic matters and decision making process within the firm.
CASE STUDY
HOW THE
CI PORTAL CHANGED THE COMPETITION RULES FOR AN ISRAELI GLOBAL COMPANY
Introduction The Company discussed in the case study, is one of the largest container shipping companies in the world. The company carries cargo via services to ports of call throughout the world and offers comprehensive “end-to-end” shipping services. In order for the company to maintain its competitive edge, it has to stay at the upfront of all business developments and opportunities which can occur for a global corporation. The company's need was to know what is happening both inside and outside the organization, all the time. The challenge – To create a CI intranet portal which will become an online source for gathering, analyzing and managing information about the external business environment. The aim was that anyone across the entire organization could use the system in order to gain knowledge of the business environment as well as to share his internal knowledge with other employees by using the outstanding knowledge sharing platform the system has to offer. Up to the creation and implementation of the CI system – the company's internal systems, were not capable of automatically and effectively managing multiple disparate data sources, like tracking live news feeds, on which the company relies to run its business. While employees needed to monitor and be kept informed of general market shifts in order to be responsive to competitors' activities - the vast amount of available information was not being utilized. The increase in the volume of unstructured information would without doubt have made this situation even more unbearable and the manual cost of dealing with this problem could be financially unrealistic. The global corporation, needed to create a tool which would assist in the daily task of monitoring, analyzing and managing all CI aspects of the firm. This tool should be accessible for all individuals in the company, not just for business analysts and top executives.
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The solution – The Company built an internal CI intranet portal using Microsoft's SharePoint 2007 platform. The internal system takes information from different internal and external sources and personalizes it automatically, according to the competitive environment. The system delivers the information via automatic email alerts of breaking news and RSS feeds. The system also creates mash-ups of various external sources and uses crawlers to identify changes in competitors' activities. The system allows all information sources to be available through one interface, and each user can have an automatically personalized page, tailored to their area of interest and expertise. With this internal system running, the global corporation was able to keep track of each and every competitor and to identify future activities and future strategic steps. The portal also created a platform for online sharing of internal knowledge within all the employees. With the CI intranet portal which was implemented successfully across 10,000 employees working globally – The system identified various business opportunities which became a real asset to the top management and assisted in core strategic issues. To conclude The system has changed the face of the corporation and the competition rules for the whole industry.
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ABOUT US
CI-Experts focus on integrating Competitive Intelligence with Knowledge Management tools. We assist firms in understanding their competitive environment by integrating our competitive intelligence expertise with a unique suite of technological platforms & solutions. Our mission is to help organizations become the best in understanding their competitive environment. Our expertise is in making our clients anticipate tomorrow's trends and keep ahead of their competitors.
For more information, please visit www.ci-experts.com or contact the person below:
Orly Shay – CEO CI-EXPERTS E-Mail: shay.orly@ci-experts.com
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