Will the Internet destroy the Competitive Intelligence community?

I was chatting with Parmelee Eastman from Eastsight Consulting today (a local member of the Boston Chapter of scip), we were chatting about the consequences of companies being more open and transparent with their information in relation to the blogging survey report, now that the new media landscape gives companies even more benefits to being open than the risks of revealing inside company information to competitors.

We thought that while there will be less need in the future to dig for competitive intelligence on an industry, that there will always be some call for companies to discovered upcoming campaigns and other competitive information.

I also suggested that it’s a competitive intelligence consultants provide a very useful service to companies when it comes to analysis of data results for marketing managers. With the wealth of data now available, without the analysis marketing departments are overwhelmed with information. Any competitors of companies that have crossed the blogging cultural divide will need to review all of the customer comments and data generated by customers, now that customers have the ability to publish so easily on the web today. The Internet and any new openness on the part of companies, rather than destroy the competitive intelligence community, will make their role even more important.

Posted by johncass at July 14, 2005 10:16 AM