The ‘Five Circles’ of establishing a new Corporate Intelligence Function (CIF)
Introduction
Tell me if you have witnessed the following situation at work. You hear the CEO or one of the top managers say: If only we knew about X early enough, we could have done Y. This meeting comes at the end of a series of meetings to analyze this year’s business results concerning the targets and goals assigned at the beginning of the year.
Don’t tell me I know you’ve heard it or something in this spirit not very long ago. The analysis process of business results is, for me, much interesting and intriguing. The play-rules consist of these keywords: plan, implement, manage, monitor, risk. These are all components that we consider when we conduct and adopt intelligence processes and thinking patterns.
It is clear that without operational information derived from intelligence processes, companies suffer from source waste (including precious time), lose their competitive edge, and ignore inner-strengths and weaknesses that ought to be empowered or abolished.
In this article, I wish to share how we build, stone by stone, an inner-corporation intelligence function. I will describe from birds-eye view the five circles of structuring this function and the first implementation steps.
The first circle — perception
How to position the corporate intelligence function (CIF) on the operational domain of the organization?!
- The intelligence process ought to be an inherent critical thinking coefficient amongst all employees and management levels.
- CIF has immediate and direct interactions with all the organization’s operating elements.
- Applying intelligence processes needs a particular state of mind which requires full obligations from all employee and managerial levels.
- CIF has to gain its fair budget share when allocating the annual organization’s resources.
- CIF’s staff are skilled professionals employees. They ought to be trained and equipped with sufficient tools and technology to accomplish their responsibilities.
The role of CIF:
Facilitate the organization’s actions towards accomplishing its vision and goals, as planned, with minimum risk and resource waste.
Notice that this role definition is not quantitative rather qualitative. Therefore, it is intriguing when wishing to measure the relevancy of investing in intelligence projects. Does the intelligence ROI of 1$ invested in intelligence return more than 1$ in profits?! That is why some managers dismiss dealing with investing in intelligence projects, thus ignore its clear and significant contribution to the organization and its business results. We measure the relevant evaluation criterion of intelligence ROI at the end of the business-plan term. We analyze this year’s results and figure out if the organization’s risk was less or equal to the predicted risk. Did we meet the goals and quantitative targets assigned to the plan? Did unexpected events derive from in or out of the organization caused any tremble or astonishment which shook the company’s stability?
Answer these questions, and you can start evaluating your investment in intelligence.
The second circle — methodology
What are the needs and gaps to be answered by our CIF?!
The classic intelligence matrix is described here by this four-square matrix. Starting with the known knowns over to the known unknowns, then to the unknown knowns and the unknown unknowns. I will discuss these four situations in a minute, but first, let me emphasize the following:
- This intelligence-matrix reflects, among other things, the risk level in which the organization operates. It also addresses the market-risk and the inner-risk for the organization.
- The squares don’t have to be equal in their surface. As long as squares 3 and 4 get dominant on the matrix, the risk level in which the company operates increases.
- The ideal shape of the intelligence-matrix in a risk-free world is when square 1 is the only square on the matrix. In real life, it is different. Thus risk accrues.
As mentioned before, the role of CIF is to minimize the risk. How does it reflect on the matrix?
- The known knowns — refers to the daily activity of the organization. Its accumulated results, knowledge, managerial processes, and productivity. CIF addresses this square with monitoring and knowledge management. Here we meet the first of the four components of corporate intelligence, hence Knowledge Management (KM).
- The unknown knowns — this is a tricky square to handle and a challenging one. It might sound like an impossible situation, but it refers to the fact that the organization creates a vast and various data-pool by its day-to-day operation. This pool is the organization’s asset, and it contains numerous hidden insights. However, if the organization does not take the time and effort in analyzing this data and extracting the hidden insights, it would never know for a fact what is already potentially known. Here we see the dominance of the second component of corporate intelligence, hence Business-Intelligence (BI). That includes automation in data analysis and processing, AI and ML algorithms and tools, data scientists, and quantitative analysts.
- The known unknowns — this square represents the bread and butter of CIF’s research. It indicated the information gaps an organization has regarding the market, the competitors, customers, technology, finance structure, regulation, threats, and opportunities. CIF ought to decrease the gaps as much it can. Here we meet the rest of the intelligence components: Competitive-Intelligence (CI) and Market-Intelligence (MI), often referred to only as CI. For these tasks, you hire skilled analysts with specific expertise.
- The unknown unknowns — this is the worst situation on the matrix and the most challenging too. In a risky playground, there would always be room on the matrix for this square. How are we expected to deal with something that we don’t know about and not aware of? The answer lies in adopting new thinking methods, hence assumption theories, prediction models, and algorithms, alongside conducting complex managerial actions such as pre-mortem analysis of big projects managed by the organization. Here we meet the futurists and the DS analysts who build predictive algorithms. The intelligence research in this situation focused on trend analysis, ecosystem analysis, and events that accrue in other environments, not necessarily related directly to the organization. Reality shows that unwanted surprises meet us without the ability to predict them (COVID19).
The third circle — sources
From where does the information come?!
In this section, I will talk about three main concepts:
The Source Spiral
- The first step in gathering information is looking inside the organization for employees, managers, and documents referring to the research question.
- The next step is to research all affiliated with our direct competitors and customers.
- Moving on to research of all that affiliates with indirect competitors and potential-customer-generators.
- Almost at the end, we look for relevant information in authorities’ records and regulatory institutes.
- Finally, we look for valuable and relevant scholarly works and researcher reports on our subjects.
The Research Type Matrix
- The primary research — means that CIF analysts analyze the raw data from first hand.
- The secondary research — here, CIF analysts use and re-process other reports done by other researchers.
- Trends and buzzwords — means that CIF analysts explore the highlighted trends, brands, patents, and breakthroughs in our immediate and near-by ecosystems.
- Questionable information — means that we received information from a source, but we are not 100% confident this information is reliable. We mark it with a little question mark.
The Source-Type Matrix
- Information we get from people (Humint).
- Information we get from the internet (Osint / Webint).
- Information we get from visuals and observation (Visint).
- Information we get from automation, algorithms, ML, and AI (Data Analysis).
The fourth circle — The intelligence mixture
Which are the intelligence components we use in our organization?!
Earlier in this article, I defined the four components of intelligence in the CIF: Competitive-Intelligence (CI), Market-Intelligence (MI), Business-Intelligence (BI), Knowledge-Management (KM). Each of them earns to be on the mixture matrix, and all of them ought to supply the Maximum information needed to accomplish the CIF’s role.
Notice that the matrix doesn’t have to include equal-sized squares. The intelligence mixture depends on the ecosystem in which the organization operates. It also depends on subjective and objective constraints while building the CIF. For example:
- Market Competition
- Market Innovations (especially the disruptive kind)
- Market size and segments size
- Regulation and finance stability
- Organization size, number of employees, how wide is the organization’s portfolio, the organization’s technology infrastructure, etc.
- The industry we are in — manufacturing, services, high-tech, low-tech.
- And more
The fifth circle — Implementation
What first steps should we take in implementing the CIF structure?
Building an intelligence unit from scratch takes time and effort. First, the organization should realize that we can not do it with a finger-snap, and it takes time until we see the results. Moreover, the process is modular. It starts with a professional core, and in time it expands, and new employees join. The organization has to hire dedicated analysts for this matter and expect them to give 100% of their time to CIF’s missions. CIF needs a dedicated full-time manager as well. Before it begins to operate, we have to know that CIF received a reasonable primary budget to purchase the right technology, tools, licenses, DBs, and entry tickets for conferences and professional meetups.
Assuming we did everything right, the presence of CIF in the organization will influence all the employees and managers in no-time. That is why we need to design and implement a training program to better position CIF and enhance employees’ intelligence thinking patterns.
We, at Webintelligency, can help any organization, whether it is a commercial company or social services institute, to transform the theory described in these five circles into reality. Contact us at webintelligency@gmail.com
For more reads on the subject, you can use the following links:
Three important Intelligence Thinking Patterns to deal with Occurrence and Probability
A new model for Intelligence ROI — (I-ROI)
A new model of Intelligence Process in a company
Competitive Intelligence in practice — expose your competitors’ strategy
Grandma, Grandpa, and Intelligence Thinking Patterns Information
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
