6/20/2006
sla2006: competitive intelligence - strategies, skills, & services
I actually went to this session accidentally - there were two CI sessions in the same time block, and I’d meant to go to the one that wasn’t focused on the practice of CI in law libraries. But it was interesting, nonetheless, and there was a lot I could pull out that was applicable to my own non-law career.
Besides, we never know where our careers are going to take us.
Competitive Intelligence: Strategies, Skills & Services
- Presented by the Legal Division
- It’s not a conference unless there are technical difficulties, naturally. The microphone is going to be the bane of the moderator’s existence, and mine as well, since I can barely hear a word.
Gitelle
- Competitive intelligence was a topic that NO one was talking about, and then suddenly everyone was talking about it and writing about it and it was becoming an integral part of law (and other special) librarians’ jobs.
- “Systematic and ethical program on gathering, analyzing and organizing information” - definition of competitive intelligence.
- Untapped wealth of information - this is true in any kind of special library environment as well as law libraries, i.e. contact reports with clients, proposals, intermediate contacts, etc.
- Many law firm librarians are handling business development research requests for their firm
- There are also many law libraries that are organizing and analyzing these requests into a useable “product”
- The lawyer has no idea of the process behind the business development report he receives from marketing, i.e., marketing asks the library to perform the research, marketing packages it and gives it to lawyer
- Moderator’s firm did not have a professional marketing department until 18 months ago, and moderator suggested hiring a full-time librarian to support the needs of this marketing department
- Used it as an opportunity to promote the services and possible services of the corporate law library, always something we need to be doing
- Do many of the things they always did, but they’ve been freshly validated now in their new role, and more people from outside the library have a better and fuller understanding of the value of the library
- Competitive intelligence department is under her umbrella in the library, rather than the library working for a separate competitive intelligence department
- Developed process for billing for competitive intelligence/business development involving the creation of a research database
- This also has the obvious benefit of allowing them to keep an eye on the shape of the requests they receive
- In closing: ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS market yourself and your library
Ruth:
- Goodwin Procter LLP: background process, marketing or library, finding the right candidate for competitive intelligence position, results
- Issues because person hired does not have a legal background - difficulty with jargon, politics of the environment
- White & Chase: they understood marketing didn’t know the resources, couldn’t buy the resources, needed more library staff to support competitive intelligence
- Competitive Intelligence would be IN the library
- Ended up hiring away her former manager from Goodwin Procter
- You find the person with the right background - business and legal in this case - and you get them no matter what
- Librarians in 75% of the White & Chase offices
- Culture skills are a hugely important skill in a global firm
- View CI as an adaptive process
- 1. Planning - what do they actually need; 2. Data Collection & Validation; 3. Analysis & Organization - how valuable is it? You have to be willing to make that decision to work in CI; 4. Delivered results, Modification & Feedback - the feedback especially is essential.
- CI focuses of competitor data to keep an organization in a competitive advantage
- 1. Alerts - through databases, internet, etc; 2. Collecting Data; 3. Processing Data; 4. People, Delivery
- “An untrained person cannot be expected to conduct professional research: legal vs. non-legal; marketing vs. CI professional or Google vs. Vetted Resources”
- To do this you need the acquired experience already as well as relevant education - LIS
- performance skills: reading comprehension/writing ability, inductive reasoning - combining information, form conclusions, logical explanation of WHY
- reasoning - logical decision making
- pattern recognition - find “pattern” across materials
- oral comprehension - listening\
- information ordering - arranging things into a meaningful order
- CI = Spying 
- Product: Accuracy, Relevant, Usable, Timely, Resources MUST be available to meet requirements of ALL clients (takes creativity), Feedback - know what is actually useful to the clients in order for the program to work at all
- It takes a lot of money and time to implement this, and management needs to know this
- A good CI manager needs to draw upon other research staff to be effective
Jan:
-challenges: non-chargeable, resources are expensive, low staffing, new products keep being released, existing products evolve, vendor consolidation, library’s inability to manage their intranet
- have both broad and specific knowledge focuses
- know how your industry operates, or you will not be able to accomplish all you need to
- company information, etc. Dialog, Hoovers, ThomasNet, USPTO, etc.
-News: Google News, Factive, WSJ, local papers, business wire, etc.
- Trade associations, gov. agencies, journals - industry information
- People: Google, Who’s Who
- Blogsearch: Feedster, Blogsearch, Technorati (was not mentioned but is probably the best engine, imo)
-prepackage info, watches and alerts, FEEDS, custom search engines, web watchers
- consider any internal systems you might have - LIBERTY3
- people are resources, use them
- CI people NEED a stong business background plus research background, plus thinking out of the box, knowing limitations, and not being afraid to deliver bad news
- there is no one right way to do this, but there are a lot of WRONG ways to do it
- common pitfalls include treating CI unprofessionally, need to ensure person in there has the necessary skills
- Ideally, CI work should proactively. You should not be reacting solely to last-minute requests
- Manage expectations - confidentiality, time requirements, costs, what’s possible (ethics), deliverable format capabilities
- match the format to the audience, think in headlines
- speak their language!!
ETA (06-21-2006): Steve, in the comments, made mention of my offhand, joking comment likening CI to spying. Just a note to clarify - I don’t really equate the two, though of course there are parallels in any kind of intelligence gathering. It’s merely my odd sense of humor revealing itself once again. 
Filed under: Librarianship, Work, Knowledge Management, Competitive Intelligence
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