What makes you a good competitive intelligence analyst?

We saw in a past article that all of us in the company are external information analysts to a greater or lesser degree. But what makes us good at this task, whether we invest a few minutes a day to it or all of our effort?

Let's start with the typical question:

Is a business intelligence analyst born or made?

An analyst is definitely Made. Of course, there are people more reflective or analytical than others, and the culture of the organization is decisive for the success of the Intelligence Function, but surely we have not built the whole company team thinking about competitive intelligence. Now, if you want to train in business intelligence analysis methods, you can look for organizations that offer a curriculum for the competitive analysis professional, such as the SCIP or the ICI, among others. We also suggest you start by visiting the Antara Academy.

There are also methods like the 5W's to guide the analysis. All of them are interesting for leaders of the Intelligence Function, or for full-time or quasi-full analysts ... But today we will focus on that person who looks at the market for a few minutes a day. Not the entire day.

Towards a collaborative environment, where each employee is a corporate intelligence analyst

Organizations are evolving towards a collaborative analysis, distributed by all departments of an organization, where anyone can participate in corporate intelligence. This distributed team is always led by one or more leaders of the Intelligence Function, with responsibilities that we will address in another post.

Whenever possible, we will select experts in each knowledge area for the Competitive Intelligence team. The daily or weekly dedication of each one will be more or less small, but it will be very relevant for the company as a whole if we assign each person the intelligence focus in which they can contribute. Those topics in which each one is an expert.

The result will be a better resilience of the organization against threats, greater agility in the response, and many other advantages.

Since the Collaborative Competitive Intelligence model is widely adopted, let's focus on what makes you a good business intelligence analyst, when that is not your main role in the company.

The practices that make you a good corporate intelligence analyst

When faced with the early warnings of business intelligence, every analyst should keep in mind quick questions:

Collaboration: Is the information relevant to me or another colleague?

In a collaborative environment, we have to -yes- collaborate with colleagues. Thus, if we receive information that may be key to someone on the team - or even in another department - we must get their attention. Antara Mussol offers agile and friendly mechanisms to draw the attention of a colleague to relevant information.

If I am one of the people who have to carry out the analysis, I will proceed to dedicate my attention to it, and at that moment I will apply the other two rules: Efficiency and Value Generation.

Efficiency: Is this information worth my time?

We have little time available. We have to be efficient, and for this, we must assess whether a piece of information deserves our attention. Efficiency requires keeping Focus.

20 'or 30' minutes a day analyzing market signals is a very short relative time (4% or 5% of my work time), but it can have a huge impact on the business. At the end of the year, thousands and thousands of euros are invested in this key task.

To decide whether to invest in reading a news item, we will not focus on the title, but on the metadata of the information. That is, we will analyze what has led our Competitive Intelligence system to propose that key information to us: It may be the mentions of key companies, certain technology, etc., within a certain context, combined with the relevance of the information source. In a few seconds, we will know if we should invest our time in reading and analyzing the information.

Of course, our Competitive Intelligence software must be smart enough to reduce noise as much as possible. That is efficiency too.

Value generation: What impact could it have on my company? How should we react?

You may be the company's "expert" on that topic. Your contribution of value cannot be a simple "This is important. Please read it too". If it is not totally obvious to others, we must say why it is important, and to what extent.

Identifying news as a business opportunity or as a threat to our plans is not enough. It may be that we unconsciously base this conclusion on our personal knowledge, and it is not clear to others why the information item is relevant. It is even possible for different people to see a threat and an opportunity from the same information. In a collaborative environment, spending 10 seconds explaining why you see it in such a way will not only generate a lot of value, but other colleagues will have to spend much less time understanding your analysis. And that, multiplied by all the people who will read the news based on your recommendation, are hours of time that the team can save. That is also efficiency and thousands of euros in savings at the end of the year.

What is my proposal for action? You have to "get wet". We are the ones who know the most about the subject, or perhaps the ones who have paid the most attention to it. If we believe that the organization invests in us for our thoughts, we have to generate a proposal for action. How should our company take advantage of that early warning?

Feedback: Did I discover anything?

Given certain information, it is possible that research threads may arise to follow, to deepen the analysis. We can discover issues that we weren't keeping an eye on, new players in the market, disruptive technology or business models that we should study, etc. In that case, we must feed back into the Corporate Intelligence system with what we have learned. Add to the company focus (or ask for it to be done) those new companies, technological concepts, or any element that we have newly discovered, or we just simply forgot to consider.

This feedback will keep our business intelligence system alive and will enable it to generate more and more value, evolving with the changing interests of the organization. Of course, the solution that we implement for the digitization of the Intelligence Function must facilitate this enrichment day by day in a collaborative way.

Conclusion

Anyone can become a good Intelligence Function analyst by following these good practices. In a few seconds, you can add a lot of value to the organization, interpreting what is happening out there based on your knowledge.

Credits: Header Image by Charles Deluvio