Competitive Intelligence

Only available as an in-house course

This three-day course provides a general introduction to the practice of competitive intelligence (CI). Participants will receive training in a broad range of research and analytic skills. These will help them to identify and manage their organisation’s information needs; improve their primary and secondary research skills; use different media monitoring tools; and employ a broad range of analytic techniques to profile competitors, evaluate markets, anticipate risks, and improve decision-making.

Request in-house course

Course Outline

Requirements Planning

The Practice of CI

  • Understanding the value of CI
  • The competitive intelligence cycle
  • What CI can and can’t do
  • Legal and ethical constraints of CI

Managing Requirements

  • Working with intelligence customers
  • Identifying collection requirements
  • The Key Intelligence Topics (KITs) process
  • Collection planning
  • Collection frameworks

Data Collection

Effective Internet Exploitation

  • Working with keywords
  • Search strategies
  • Search engines and operators
  • Automating data collection
  • Alert services
  • Working with the Deep Web
  • Working with Social Media
  • Building a customized search engine
  • Essential browser tools and extensions

Investigating Competitors

  • Company profiling
  • Identifying management and ownership
  • Working with official records
  • Working with satellite / imagery sources
  • Sources of financial data

Market and Competitor Analysis

Analysing Market and Competitor Intelligence

  • Analytical techniques to evaluate your business, competitors and operating environment
  • Cognitive biases and business blindspots
  • Learning from feedback and “failure”

Establishing a CI Unit

  • Guidelines for establishing and running a CI practice in your organisation
Request in-house course

Course Benefits

On completion of this course, participants will have acquired the ability to:

  • Identify and manage their intelligence requirements
  • Improve the quality, accuracy and relevance of their search results
  • Automate the collection of data from the web and social media
  • Employ simple frameworks to analyse data on competitors and markets

Course Requirements

Participants are required to bring a laptop with them and to set up a Gmail and Twitter account if they do not already have one.