This Session was on Competitive Intelligence (CI) and was ran by Michelle Geocaris, one of the very best  and most knowledgeable CI people I know.

First she defines CI as “The action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing Intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization.” Which I totally agree with.

She would go on to show the applications of CI such as:

• Profiling Competitors
• Benchmarking
• Technology assessment and more

Then we hear about the 2 kinds of CI: Primary which is CI you get form live interaction with people, and Secondary which is form print. Next is a great definition of Competitor intelligence, which is a barrow view focusing on a specific organization and Competitive intelligence, which focuses on a wider view such as an industry. The flow for CI is next and is very simple; Collect-Compile-Analyze-Apply-Act. This pretty much spells it out. Now we get into some tools such as Glassdoor were you can find information on salaries, interview process, how the company and CEO is viewed and more.

Then comes Indeed were you can see what different companies might be looking for and more. Of course no tools set would be complete without the ability so check out Org charts and Michelle gives us a great tools called “The Official Board”. IN a word there you have it Competitive Intelligence by one of the best.