In our blogs, Jeroen and I talked about ethical intelligence gathering. We’ve discussed this topic from the organization point of view. I recently came across a news item which made me think about another point of view: the perspective of the one(s) the intelligence is gathered about.

Competitive Intelligence still seems to have a branding problem. A lot of people still don’t know what exactly CI is; sometimes they just had nothing to do with it until now, but most of the times they don’t even realize that they are already doing it, or parts of it. We’ve spoken about the definition in several posts already, so I will not go there again. Instead, I’d like to discuss some (somewhat) related professions or activities where (parts of) Competitive Intelligence can be applied, the first of which is reputation management.

You have launched a new product onto the market, and of course you want to know how your customers feel about it. Are they happy about it? Disappointed? Or maybe you want to know how your customers (and other people) feel about your company in general? It is difficult to find reliable answers to these sorts of questions. Companies spend thousands on market research reports, only to obtain information from about a year old. What if you want to know how your customers feel now, at this very moment? The answer is sentiment analysis.

I have to make an apology for the misleading title, because this post is not about competitive intelligence and social media. At least, not the combination that is so often described as synergy in its purest form. I cannot help thinking that some (more or less) highly respected people write about social media (in some cases related to Competitive Intelligence or any other underestimated and underappreciated profession) because writing about social media scores. I really encourage everyone to draw attention to my beloved profession, but do not do it by stating nonsense, please! You might as well write about CI in relation to Britney Spears or Tiger Woods.

This article by Bruce A. Brien, author of The Stratascope Sales Enablement Blog gives basic but helpful tips, for people who are just starting to discover Competitive Intelligence, on how to set up a system to monitor their competitors. Basically he categorizes three ways to collect information on each of your competitors:

• Their website: the website will not only display their services, products and solutions offerings. It will also most likely be used to broadcast their success stories.
• Social media: Brien recommends following your competitors on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, et cetera.
• RSS feeds: set up RSS feeds based on searches about your competitors and one or two keywords, such as issue.