Various strategies and phenomena are employed in businesses, especially today’s fast-paced digital world. As a result, different new terms are introduced, and people often mix them up with words that have similar names.
The first one is Business Intelligence, and the second is Competitive Intelligence. Both terms have distinct meanings and functions. Both phenomena, however, have the same goal in mind: to guide decision-making.
A whopping 94 percent of companies invest in competitive information. Because of their effectiveness and efficiency, these terms have become popular. The adoption of phenomena in organizations is depicted in the following figure.
Business intelligence and competitive intelligence are two distinct but related concepts. Both terms refer to how a company gathers data from various sources to make well-informed strategic planning process decisions.
Business Intelligence: What Is It & How Does It Work?
BI is extracting and analyzing factual data from a relevant resource. This investigation must result in a better understanding of the competition, the industry, and the customers.
Professional BI organizations collect raw data and turn it into actionable information. They use their data to track trends and developments, which they then use to outsmart competitors in the market.
The effectiveness of the organization’s B2B sales strategies, customer demand, or consumer engagement activities is some of the general elements observed in the BI. Benchmarking, sales analytics, and reporting are some of the tools and strategies used for BI.
The Importance of Business Intelligence
Its integration into all strategies highlights the importance of Business Intelligence in an organization. The role of BI in an organization is to help it succeed.
Some of its crucial functions include:
- Data Collection: BI’s primary function is to analyze all of the data that the company needs. A BI analyst also identifies key business intelligent technologies for data organization.
- Evaluate and Analyze: The collected data is evaluated, and all junk from the storage is removed. The analyst then examines all of the data sets that could be useful to the company.
- Data Presentation: After being analyzed, the collected data is presented in a presentable format. This can take the form of a graph or a table.
- Data Retention: The big data was analyzed and prepared.
- Briefing Departments: A secondary role of BI is to provide briefings on the data collected to all departments. It is in charge of the department’s accurate forecasting and future analysis.
What Is Competitive Intelligence?
The competitor’s information is commonly referred to as the CI. However, it is a broad topic that can encompass many aspects of a business.
The CI can be defined as a phenomenon that allows a company to increase its revenue options while lowering its strategic risk. Intelligence and data are used in conjunction with the business environment and pricing strategies to increase competitiveness.
There are four steps to the complete procedure. These include data collection, raw data evaluation, data dissemination to stakeholders, and action based on the data set.
The Major Focus Of Competitive Intelligence
The number of competitors is rapidly increasing. A single CI department cannot cover all of the product’s current and future competitors.
As a result, it’s a good idea to prioritize your CI program’s goals and objectives. To summarize, if it is focused on a single department at a time, it can perform well.
For example, your ultimate goal may be to increase product sales. Then it would help if you concentrated on competitors’ sales strategies. However, if you want to introduce a new product to the market, your focus must change.
Business Intelligence Vs. Competitive Intelligence
Although BI and CI are two distinct phenomena, they are inextricably linked. CI is even regarded as a subset of BI. This is because the CI’s data is later used in the BI.
For instance, if a company is experiencing a significant drop in sales or financial losses, the CI data should be considered. It could be due to a competitor’s new product launch, or they could have used academic writing services for content marketing. Based on these data sets provided by CI, stakeholders will be able to use BI.
The skillset required for both phenomena, however, is distinct. BI is a more technical field that necessitates knowledge of database design, data management, and quantitative functions, among other things.
On the other hand, CI is heavily reliant on strategic analysis and prediction; numbers are less influential in this domain. Nonetheless, both phenomena operate in tandem and play critical roles in an organization.
Conclusion
Business intelligence and competitive intelligence are two different ways of gathering data to help your company decide how to act in its market.
Business intelligence (BI) provides immediate and easy access to the context of the information. However, with CI, you must use various methods to determine the correct context. Also, keep in mind that competitive intelligence context and information sources are challenging, and the quality of information should be regularly questioned.
Companies that combine both BI and CI will be able to make better business decisions and be more competitive.
