Session 2

Competitive Intelligence
Prof. Samadrita Bhattacharyya
Recap
The Business pressures-Responses-Support model
Recap
BI architecture
Vodafone Uses Business Intelligence to Improve
Customer Growth and Retention Plans

1. What were the challenges for Vodafone New Zealand?

2. How did it address these issues?
3. List the tools used by Vodafone’s applications.
4. What benefits are being derived from this initiative?
5. What can we learn from this case?

So what are the benefits of successful BI implementation?

Benefits of BI
 Time savings
 Single version of truth
 Improved strategies and plans
 Improved tactical decisions
 More efficient processes
 Cost savings
 Faster, more accurate reporting
 Improved decision making
 Improved customer service
 Increased revenue
Introduction to Competitive Intelligence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJFdnaZHoZY
Competitive Intelligence

 A systematic program for capturing, analyzing, and managing

external (and internal) information and knowledge to improve
organization’s decision-making capabilities
 More focus on external : industry, competitors, govt.
 Should include internal perspectives as well
 Legal business practice, as opposed to industrial espionage
 “Early warning analysis”
 More holistic than competitor analysis
 Results must be actionable
Examples of CI

 Airline tickets
 Investment trading
 Tech startups (Airbnb)
 Sport analytics
Data sources for CI

 Financial reporting
 Market statistics
 Newspaper
 Social media
 Industry research papers
Early warning analysis for CI

1. How willing are customers to continue to pay for further

improvements in performance that historically merited
attractive price premiums?

 Would you pay extra for another button on your TV remote?

 Another function on MS Excel?

 Severe threat of competition, even disruption

Early warning analysis for CI

2. Are customer preferences and habits changing due to

enabling technologies and/or changing social norms?

 Change appears in the fringes

 Old people call, young people text

 New technology may take over (Whatsapp over sms)

Early warning analysis for CI

3. How active are startups at the industry’s edge?

 Startups focusing more on analytics, 3D printing, investment

and financial markets, renewable energy

 New businesses may take over

Early warning analysis for CI

4. Are competitors with disruptive strategies having a

material impact on portions of the industry?

 Disruptive innovators make consumption simpler,

convenient, and more affordable
 Financial services industry seeing so much disruption
 Google, PayPal, Airtel competing with Citi, ICICI, HDFC
 Unanticipated competitors!
Early warning analysis for CI

5. Will current or pending changes in government action

shift the basis or competition or make life easier for
entrants?

 Cashless economy
 Surge of mobile wallets and UPI
Uses of CI
 Develop corporate or business unit strategies
 Shape counter-competitive strategies against one or more
competitors
 Prepare a new product launch, new market entry, or other
strategic move in the market
 Benchmark other organizations
 Anticipate and plan for future market opportunities and
disruptions
 Assess effectiveness of competitors market positioning
and product messaging
CI life cycle
CI life cycle - Collect

 Primary source of data

 Interviewing
 Accessing a data set
 Secondary source of data
 Newspaper article
 Industry report
CI life cycle - Synthesize

 Distilling collected information

into manageable snippets
 Preparing executive summaries
CI life cycle - Analyze

 Scenario planning
 SWOT analysis
 Balanced scorecard
 Data mining
CI life cycle - Strategize

 Development of new strategy

 New requirements for collecting
information to support, refine,
or modify the strategy
 CI cycle starts all over
Readings

 https://www.kompyte.com/blog/competitive-intelligence-examples/
 https://hbr.org/2012/09/create-early-warning-systems-to-detect-
competitive-threats