Compare your Competitors’ Supply Chain or Global Trading Strategies
Operational Competitive Intelligence (OCI) has filled a void in management thinking. OCI focuses on designing, structuring and deploying fitting intelligence strategy, infrastructures and frameworks that are necessary for course plotting an entity unto superiority. Our strategy platforms provide an enduring foundation and grounding point for which all subsequent work can be built and added to. This is accomplished by bringing a disciplined and intelligent structure to the question of how firms achieve superior profitability; “Porter’s rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century”. OCI essentially means understanding and learning what is happening inside your company’s operational world and outside your business so that clients’ can be as competitive operationally, as possible. It means learning as much as possible—as soon as possible about our clients’ competition in their industry in general or about one’s competitors, or even one county’s particular zoning rules. In short, it empowers our clients’ to anticipate and face challenges through supply chain design and global trading strategies head on.
Business Intelligence has a close working relationship to Operational Competitive Intelligence. Business Intelligence has two forms; Its narrow (contemporary) form is more focused on information technology and internal focus than OCI, while its broader (historical) definition is more inclusive than OCI. Knowledge Management (KM), when properly achieved, is seen as an information-technology driven organizational practice relying on data mining, corporate intranets and mapping organizational assets to make it accessible to organization members for decision-making. OCI shares some aspects of KM; they are, human intelligence and experience based for a more sophisticated qualitative analysis. KM is essential for effective change. A key effective factor is a powerful, dedicated Information Technology system executing the full intelligence cycle.
NorthBound LI Key points of OCI
- OCI is an ethical and legal business practice, as opposed to industrial espionage, which is illegal.
- The focus is on the external operations of a various business environments.
- There is a process involved in gathering information, converting it into intelligence and then utilizing this in business decision making. Some OCI professionals erroneously emphasize that if the intelligence gathered is not usable, or actionable, then it is not intelligence. We disagree, all intelligence is good intelligence at one point in time or another.
We regard our OCI international and domestic services as the organizational operation function responsible for the early identification of risks and opportunities in the market place before they become obvious. Our industrial experts also call this process the early signal analysis. Our OCI service focuses attention on the difference between dissemination of widely available factual information (such as market statistics, financial reports, newspaper clippings) performed by functions such as libraries and information centers, rather operational competitive intelligence which is a perspective on developments and events aimed at yielding a competitive advantage.
Operational competitive intelligence has been influenced by national strategic intelligence. Although national intelligence was researched 50 years ago, competitive intelligence was introduced during the 1990s and is now a major factor in today commerce world. Our professionals have learn from national-intelligence experts, especially in the analysis of complex situations. The term OCI is often viewed as synonymous with competitor analysis, but Operational competitive intelligence is more than analyzing competitors—it is about making our clients’ organization more competitive relative to its entire environment and stakeholders: customers, competitors, distributors, technologies, and macroeconomic data.
Competitive Insight
In a competitive marketplace, up-to-date information can make the difference between keeping pace, getting ahead, or being left behind. A smart intelligence in operations can serve as an early-warning system for disruptive changes in the competitive landscape, whether that change is a rival’s new product or pricing strategy or the entrance of an unexpected player into your market. No one company can be totally stealthy, after all. All corporate maneuvers leave a trail. It is simply a matter of knowing where to look. In some cases, entrepreneurs have used intelligence-gathering tactics to learn what is really going on at their own companies, with startling results.
Northbound keeps a list of more than 500 such sources in our Internet Intelligence Index. Operations competitive intelligence can also help you spot openings in the market. Careful monitoring of large companies, for example, could give you a jump on subcontracting opportunities. Some operations, such as gathering data in advance of a key strategic decision, will require you to set hard deadlines. Others, like identifying emerging competitive threats, can become ongoing and incorporated into day-to-day operations. In either case, never lose sight of your goal.
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