The Data Revolution is upon the CI Professional

Paul Santilli, WW Business Intelligence & Customer Insights Organization at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, was one of the speakers at the Nordic Intelligence Day 2018 and we invited him to share his take on where Competitive Intelligence is going and what advice he would give to a CI Professional operating in a very competitive landscape. For the full video, scroll to the bottom of this page. Below is a paraphrased transcription of Paul’s insights.

When you look at IOT, the Internet of Things, you can see that the quantity of data that’s being generated in the marketplace today, coupled with the proliferation of social media, has had an astounding effect on the volume of data that exists for the CI organization to process. The data revolution is upon us already, and growing by the second!

Managing that amount of data at the speed of acquisition, in as real-time as possible, are some of the major challenges facing CI practitioners and strategists alike when trying to develop a model that ensures you can provide a competitive advantage for your organization. Some of the things that are really important, and I stress this many times, are:

1. The Time to Insight – The ability to acquire information as fast as possible with respect to the amount of data that’s being out there and to develop insight that is relative to the strategy of the company
2. The Time to Execution – so that you’re able achieve and deliver upon activities that benefit your company over your competition
3. The emphasis on tools, processes, automation and mostly, organizational structure and  alignment – which is critical to the effective implementation of the strategy and overall success of the company

You need to do this by means that are anticipatory rather than responsive, so that the information you’re executing on is not already outdated. These are very critical elements to consider as part of your CI-modeling in the organization in the 21^st century idea economy.