Art of war - Sun Tze

Art of war - Sun Tze

Why Competitive Intelligence does not work?

Why Competitive Intelligence does not work in some companies?

Here you are the answer from Competitive Intelligence, Author; Larry Kahaner

1. Top management was not involved
2. Tasks are not focus or issue oriented
3. To much emphasis on collection
4. Not involving every one in the company
5. Not establishing ethical guidelines

Building Competitive Intelligence System in your Company

How to build Competitive Intelligence system ?

Here you are the answer from Competitive Intelligence, Author; Larry Kahaner

1. Select a director of Competitive Intelligence and put him in the right location
2. Bringing ex military or political intelligence people
3. The director should determine how the key intelligence users are and what they will use the intelligence for
4. Perform an intelligence audit of your company
5. Design a network to move information and intelligence around the company using what is already in place
6. Establish companywide ethical and legal guideline for Competitive Intelligence

Business War Games

Business War Games
I have bought this book ( Business War Games )for a week ago and I recommend it for all CI professionals

Competitive Intelligence Basics Workshop in Egypt

CI professionals, You are welcomed in Egypt
Competitive Intelligence Basics Workshop (ICI-1)
Nov. 10/11 2008, Cairo, Egypt

Institute for Competitive Intelligence

In times of increasing competition and complex, fastmoving competitive environments, it is important to be one step ahead of the competition. Businesses have to anticipate the activities of their competitors when developing their strategic positioning. Competitive analyses are essential to the successful development of corporate strategy, conducting anticipatory strategy planning and gaining a measurable competitive advantage. Competitive Intelligence, which brings in a systematic analysis process, adds the decisive edge to strategy.
This workshop conveys the fundamentals needed to efficiently conduct research, master information overload, use analytical tools intelligently, implement CI as a process in your business and make strategic decisions with greater certainty.


Workshop focus

The value of Competitive Intelligence (CI) for your business

Analysis of one’s own company: Where are we now and where do we intend to go?

Handling the information overload and testing data quality

Analytical methods to determine the competitive and market situation

Successful implementation of a CI system in a business

CI professionals, You are welcomed in Egypt

Currency Wars, coming

"Currency Wars, coming" a good vedio on youtube.com
you can else check Currency Wars - Song Hongbing

Financial Intelligence for Strategic Planning

Financial Intelligence for Strategic Planning
by Jim Lenskold

Look at the some of the fundamental information you collect to guide the strategic market planning process: customer intelligence, competitive intelligence and market intelligence.
Marketers use this intelligence as insight into the types of strategies that are likely to be successful. Bringing financial intelligence into the mix offers new insight into the potential value of strategic and tactical alternatives and also leads to a disciplined approach to marketing campaign development.

Read more
http://www.lenskold.com/content/articles/mprofs_120203.html.

Competitive Profiling with Financial Ratio

Competitive Profiling with Financial Ratio - Competitive Intelligence Magazine

This is the main points of paper was published by The Competitive Intelligence Magazine It will help you to use the financial analysis for competitive profiling

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Companies with great cash flow, low debt, high revenue per employee, and good financial ratios across the board will be the ones who have the financial stability to expand, acquire and generally mount a credible competitive threat.

Companies with poor cash flow, high debt, low net working capital, and low revenue per employee will generally have difficulty staying in business - let alone gaining market share.

This kind of analysis indicates which companies can and can not adequately fund ambitious construction programs, huge advertising campaign, and accept short term losses while they gobble up market share. If you see a big announcement of a rival, you can use this analysis to estimate whether their new strategy will be successful

Low liquidity requires cash flow, high debt load and / or short term debt will limit additional funding, and make a company sensitive to interest rates fluctuations

A company with strong cash flow relative to its peers will have correspondingly strong options available , they can more easily fund promotional efforts, fund merger or territorial expansion, if the firm is overly cautious, they may find the strong cash flow attacks the takeover bid

The debt ratio measures how much the company relies on short term debt to solve its business problems, a company with a high total debt/lT debt ratio will have a relatively high percentage of short term debt in its financing, and will be much more sensitive to interest rate fluctuations

Competitors with very low levels of short term debt, or total debt for that matter, will have a wider access to funding if they wish to pursue a market expansion
If cash flow is negative this ratio is a measure of the rate of blood loss

Goodwill and intangibles can be a playground to hide many a management sin
If subtracting intangibles make TNW negative, it is an important signal for the health of the business. Negative TNW is a bad sign unless there are some very good reasons for it

The ratio of current liabilities to TNW indicates whether your business is creditor funded or investor funded, A creditor funding is strained by economic conditions

Net Working Capital (NWC) measures whether current operations are self supporting
If cash and receivables are less than expenses and payables, then the enterprise is not sustaining it self, consistent operating losses drain current assets. This is bad sign for the health of the company

The ratio of funded debt/NWC examines how rapidly a company can pay off its debt out of current operations. If the denominator of this ratio is small, the debt service will be difficult, especially if the interest rates are rising

Some companies adding to cash reserves via retained earning, and by selling additional stock, when stock prices are depressed, little is gained by selling additional stock, this will depress the stock price even future and will not raise much cash, retaining earnings will cut dividends, and is likely to depress the stock price

Strong NWC will fuel strong cash flow and provide tidy operating margins, you can expect a company with a good NWC to be more successfully aggressive because they have more room to move

The equity to debt ratio (stock/total debt) measure the amount that assets can decline, or debt can increase before the company becomes insolvent: a much more serious bankruptcy conditions

Price wars are won by the firm with more capital intensive cost structure
when demand falls however, the labor intensive firms is better able to cut costs, it is hard to lay off a new building or to downsize a sheet-metal press

A more direct way of measuring capital intensity is to see how revenue changes compared to the capital stock
The capital intensive company is more to likely to price aggressively. The more labor- intensive firms is more likely to increase its capital stock during an expansion

CV of Competitive Business Intelligence Specialist in Egypt

Ahmad Nagy

• Business Analyst - Business Intelligence Unit - Global Textile Firm in Egypt " Participating in establishing the Business Competitive Intelligence Unit and Online Competitive Intelligence"

• Marketing, E-marketing and Strategic Management Trainer
• Researcher and Analyst at regional consulting firm in Egypt
• Prepared marketing feasibility studies and valuation for the below companies in Egypt;
• E-marketer and Marketing Officer at a soft ware company
• Business Developer at soft ware company.
• Credentials;
  · Studying MBA at Arab Academy for Banking and Financial Sciences - Egypt
  · Post-graduate Diploma in Business and Marketing “Cairo University” 2007
  · B.Sc. of Business Administration Faculty of Commerce - “Cairo
  University” 2004
• Competitive Intelligence Basics Workshop Cairo Nov.2008 ,Institute for Competitive Intelligence. http://www.competitive-intelligence.com/

Location: Egypt

Age: 25 years old

I am one of the fewer Egyptians who work in Business and Competitive Intelligence career

What CI can do for your company?

Anticipate changes in the marketplace

Anticipate actions of competitors

Learn from the successes and failures of others

Increase the range and quality of acquisition targeted

Learn about new technologies, products, and process that affect your business

Learn about political ,legislative or regulatory changes that may affect your business

Enter new business

Look at your own business practices with an open mind

Help implement the latest management tool

Source; Competitive Intelligence, Larry Kahaner

Information vs. Intelligence

What is the difference between Information and Intelligence?
It is very important to know the difference between Information and Intelligence
Let us see What Mr.Larry Kahaner said about that in his book.


“I’ve got too much to read”
Most company managers
They have too much information no intelligence
Intelligence , not information is what managers need to make a decision, another term of intelligence is knowledge

Information ; is a numbers, statistics or a bits of data, it always appears to be telling you some thing but reality it’s not. So you cannot make good decision based on information

Intelligence; is a collection of information pieces that have been filtered and analyzed, it has been turned into something that can be acted upon.

Source; Competitive Intelligence,Larry Kahaner

Competitive Intelligence Drives More Corporate Decisions, New Survey Shows

Competitive Intelligence Drives More Corporate Decisions, New Survey Shows
-- But Many Still Struggle to Get CI Messages to, and Heard By, Company Leadership --

NEW YORK, Oct 01, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- In a classic good news/bad news report on Competitive Intelligence (CI), more U.S. corporations now use it to drive critical strategic and tactical decisions than ever before. But the same survey, conducted by consultants Outwards Insights, found that fully one-fourth (24%) of respondents still don't have a structured way to deliver intelligence to decision-makers in their organizations.
These are two of the key findings in the most recent version of "Ostriches & Eagles," which gauges the effectiveness and use of CI among U.S. companies across industries, and compares results with a similar survey conducted in 2005.
"There's no question that more of Corporate America 'gets' the value of CI," said Ken Sawka, Managing Partner of Outward Insights and author of the survey. He cited the growth among respondents who said that CI was "an integral part of operational or tactical decisions such as:"
Business development/Sales 83% now vs. 78% in 2005
New product launches 79% now vs. 74% in 2005
R&D planning & execution 71% now vs. 55% in 2005, "a huge jump"
Alliances & joint venture 68% now vs. 59% in 2005

Sawka also noted that 72% of this year's respondents use CI to "anticipate and thwart competitor strategies," compared with 64% in 2005.
Among other key findings:
-- More respondents (28%) integrate likely competitor reactions into their plans for launching new products than in 2005 (21%)
-- The use of scenario planning nearly doubled from 30% in 2005 to 59% this year
-- The percentage of respondents who believe CI is "an integral part of the strategic planning process" was at 85%, the same as in 2005
-- Thirty-seven percent of respondents feel that CI does "not have sufficient stature" in their organizations to have a "significant impact." This number is almost unchanged from three years ago
-- Roche and IBM tie as the top "eagles," the best corporate intelligence users, according to the respondents
Sawka also expressed concern about the obstacles that still impede corporations from realizing the full value of competitive intelligence. "Our survey found that nearly half of respondents say their CI programs are not sufficiently funded," said Sawka. "The gains we are seeing in the strategic application of CI may be short-lived if these programs are not funded adequately and given proper stature within organizations." The survey also found that almost one in five executives surveyed believe that senior managers do not value the competitive intelligence they receive.
Industry Differences
There were some notable differences in the responses from the seven industry groups surveyed: consumer products, energy, financial services, insurance, high-tech, manufacturing and pharmaceutical. For example, consumer products companies were least likely to have organized intelligence (62% vs. 76% norm) but most likely to make CI an integral part of their strategic planning process (92% vs. 85% norm). Insurance companies were most likely to have organized intelligence (88% vs. 76% norm), and energy companies were least likely to make intelligence an integral part of their strategic planning process (71% vs. 85% norm).
Outward Insights' survey was conducted in June and July 2008. The survey consisted of telephone interviews with 100 senior executives at U.S. corporations. More than two-thirds of the companies participating had revenues of $1 billion or greater.
SOURCE: Outwards Insights

Currency Wars - Song Hongbing

If you work in CI world you have to monitor the current economic war between USA and China which called Currency War according to Mr.Hongbong
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Chinese buy into conspiracy theory
By Richard McGregor in Beijing

Published: September 25 2007 17:44 | Last updated: September 25 2007 17:44

The Battle of Waterloo. The deaths of six US presidents. The rise of Adolf Hitler. The deflation of the Japanese bubble economy, the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and even environmental destruction in the developing world.

In a new Chinese best-seller, Currency Wars , these disparate events spanning two centuries have a single root cause: the control of money issuance through history by the Rothschild banking dynasty.

Even today, claims author Song Hongbing, the US Federal Reserve remains a puppet of private banks, which also ultimately owe their allegiance to the ubiquitous Rothschilds.

Such an over-arching conspiracy theory might matter as little as the many fetid tracts that can still be found in the west about the “gnomes of Zurich” and Wall Street’s manipulation of global finance.

But in China, which is in the midst of a lengthy debate about opening its financial system under US pressure, the book has become a surprise hit and is being read at senior levels of government and business.

“Some senior heads of companies have been asking me if this is all true,” says Ha Jiming, the chief economist of China International Capital Corp, the largest local investment bank.

The book also gives ammunition, however hay-wire, to many in China who argue that Beijing should resist pressure from the US and other countries to allow its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate.

The book’s publisher, a unit of the state-owned CITIC group, said Currency Wars had sold nearly 200,000 copies, with an estimated 400,000 extra pirated copies in circulation as well.

Mr Song, an information technology consultant and amateur historian who has lived in the US since 1994 and is now based in Washington, says his interest was sparked by trying to uncover what lay behind the Asian crisis in 1997.

After he began blogging some of his findings, his friends suggested he find a publisher for a longer work. He professes himself surprised by the book’s success.

“I never imagined it could be so hot and that top leaders would be reading it,” he says during a book tour in Shanghai. “People in China are nervous about what’s going on in financial markets but they don’t know how to handle the real dangers. This book gives them some ideas.”

The thing that most shocked him, he says, was his “discovery” that the Fed is a privately owned and run bank. “I just never imagined a central bank could be a private body,” he says.

The Fed does describe itself “as an unusual mixture of public and private elements”. While its seven governors are all appointed by the US president, private banks do hold shares in its 12 regional reserve banks.

But Mr Song ignores the government’s role and argues that the Fed’s key functions are ultimately controlled by five private banks, such as Citibank, all of which have maintained a “close relationship” with the Rothschilds.

Mr Song is defensive about his focus on the Rothschilds and what the book depicts as their Jewish clannishness.

“The Chinese people think that the Jews are smart and rich, so we should learn from them,” he says. “Even me, I think they are really smart, maybe the smartest people on earth.”

Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, is not impressed. “The Chinese have the highest regard for what they see as Jewish intellectual and commercial acumen, with little or no concurrent culture of antisemitism. This claim, however, plays to the most discredited and outmoded canards surrounding Jews and their influence. That it should gain currency in the world’s most important emerging economy is a great concern.”

The book has been ridiculed in internet postings in China, for exaggerating the lingering influence of the Rothschilds and being a re-write of existing conspiracy theories in the west.

Mr Ha puts the book’s popularity down to the decade-long stagnation in Japan and the Asian financial crisis, which he says had a profound impact on many Chinese policymakers.

Such officials remain deeply suspicious of advice from western countries to open up the financial system and float the currency. “They think it is just a new way of looting developing countries,” Mr Ha says.

Mr Song himself has been commissioned to write a number of new books to capitalise on his success, on the yen, the euro and also on China’s financial system.

But in conversation, he sounds hesitant about the line his future tomes might take. “This book may be totally wrong, so before the next one, I have to make sure my understanding is right,” he says.

“Before this book, I was a nobody, so I could say anything I liked, but now the situation has changed.”

Source; Financial Times

Competitive Intelligence: How To Track Your Competitors & Uncover Their Not So Hidden Secret

By Srikanth Chari

In business, you always need to know what your competitors are doing. To survive you must perform competitive intelligence activities and monitor the broader market for new developments that could affect your company, your products and brands, suppliers, and distributors.

Tracking your competitors is the only way to make to make sure you are thwarting threats, taking advantage of opportunities, marketing effectively, and, ultimately, winning in the marketplace. By performing competitive intelligence, you will significantly increase your margins and profitability.

There's one resource that's often underutilized in this regard: your competitors' websites. Today's digital footprint, while increasing corporate transparency and yielding greater power to consumers in the marketing dialogue, enables marketers to measure conversions. Companies spend enormous sums of money on maintaining their websites so that they can attract and influence prospects, customers, and analyst.

Your competitors may wish they could block you from their websites, but remember that the information they post there is public. If you aren't harvesting this rich - and free - resource, you are the loser!

Here are 5 things you must do regularly to effectively track your competitors and uncover their not so hidden secrets:
1. Identify your competitors
Now, this may seem odd to you. You’re probably thinking, “doesn't a company know who its competitors are?” Not always. New firms come seemingly out of nowhere, preempting existing companies with different technologies or approaches they never saw coming.

Often a company in an adjacent area will change its positioning to try and address your market, or a new startup may emerge in a related area. You need to create a master list of your key competitors and make sure you keep this up to date.

To do this, Google the terms, which describe your industry, your products and services. You can also use a little known feature in Google. In the search box, type in "related:www.yourcompanyname.com" and Google will display a list of companies that it considers related to yours. Look for new companies that show up and see if any of these pose a threat.


2. Check your competitors’ home pages for positioning changes
When you visit a company's website, first look at its home page to see if they have made changes to the way they describe their products and services. Carefully scrutinize how they emphasize different features or benefits and how they are positioning themselves. Sometimes, you can learn a lot even from the subtle changes your competitors make on their home page.

More.
Source; http://www.workz.com/content/view_content.html?section_id=523&content_id=7072

The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy

The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy
By Michael Porter