Competitive Intelligence and the small business

I wasn't planning to do another entry so soon after the last one, but felt I had to highlight an excellent article on competitive intelligence in the latest issue of FreePint. The article, entitled DIY Detection: Competitive Intelligence for SMEs is by the Australian based consultant, Vernon Prior, and gives a very comprehensive description of how to do CI on a low budget. (I wrote an article several years ago for the sadly defunct Competia newsletter on a similar topic - you can still read the article Competitive Intelligence on a Small Budget but unfortunately many of the suggested links for Internet research are now dead or no longer offer the same material).

Vernon's article covers all aspects of CI - from what to look for, how to look for it, and what to do with the intelligence when you've found it. He discusses both secondary and primary sources and concludes with brief guidelines on actually setting up a CI operation. A well written article, that beats mine in its depth and comprehensiveness - taking account of the limited word count available for such articles.

Another site of interest to Competitive Intelligence specialists is Jens Thieme's Competitive Intelligence & Marketing Intelligence Resources & Tools web-site at www.markintell.com. This - still growing - resource for all aspects of CI, includes some excellent articles on CI and related disciplines and Vernon is a contibutor/member of the site.