Figuring out how you can make your business more profitable means taking a comprehensive look at how your run your organization, the marketing strategies you employ and how your competition is performing. Understanding the intelligence process means that you can correctly evaluate the steps you need to take in order to maximize the profits and performance of your business. For many companies, this will require getting competitive intelligence consulting.
Intelligence consulting is a profession that can take a competitive intelligence number of calculations based on public information and from that show you just how your competitors are succeeding and what you need to do to either cover a potential weak point in your business or take advantage of an opportunity that are not being exploited. Getting solid competitive intelligence consulting is an investment well worth the time and resources since the results are usually quite dramatic depending on your business and the market you are in.
The competitive intelligence professionals start by evaluating the nature of your business and comparing that to the general market, identifying your competitors and examining through public records, press releases, profit reports and all legal means the nature of how they operate, the focus of their business, their strengths and potential weaknesses as compared to your own company. From the research provided by the competitive intelligence professionals you can determine a number of important items.
The focus of your competitor: While you may be in the same market, their focus and efforts might very well be different in nature.
The structure of their business: Are they management heavy? Do they carry some type of financial burden that doesn’t allow them to quickly take advantage of new trends or is their internal business practice contains information that you can use to improve your business?
Marketing strategies: Good competitive intelligence process takes into account where your competitors are spending their money for advertising. From this, you can see if they are exploiting certain means such as radio, internet, TV and the like and find places where you can compete or even dominate a certain marketing area.
These are just a few ways that intelligence professionals gather information and make substantive reports that provide a full view of how your competitors operate. The competitive intelligence process is perfectly legal and in fact respected since it only uses sources that the company itself releases to the public.