How to Create a Successful Competitive Intelligence Program

What does it take to build a successful Competitive Intelligence Program and how do you sustain it over time? Those were the questions we asked Jesper Martell, the CEO of Comintelli during a video session. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the full video of Jesper sharing his experiences on this topic. Below is a paraphrased transcription of his advice:

People often ask us what a successful Competitive Intelligence (CI) program is and for me it doesn’t really have anything to do with having the right process or the right tools,  and newsletters doesn’t have anything to do with having the right training, analysis methods, or anything like that. In my opinion, and also based on what I’ve seen as the common denominator, a successful CI program is really about having great content! In other words, you need to have something that users can use in their decision making – something that helps and supports them.  If you have great content you can be sure that your users are going to come back again, and if you don’t have good content you can be sure that they’re going to say bye-bye and you’ll never see them again.

So, the question then becomes; how do you create great content? Well, in order to do that you have to know who the content is for, who is going to read it, who is your target group, what they are interested in, what are the key intelligence topics that are keeping them awake at night, and why this is important to them? You have to really know your target group and these are quite tough questions that you have to ask yourself, and your organization, so it’s not easy. But if you have that foundation, that’s when you can really create relevant, filtered, customized content that is actionable intelligence that people can use. When you have that, that’s when you’ll have a successful CI program.