How to Capitalize on Change: SCIP New York and Connecticut Chapters, June 6

These are the good new days for those who recognize and seize the competitive advantage of change. Surprised?  While most businesspeople think they know today’s reality and can identify emerging trends, they rarely do…and they are missing opportunities.

In this session, Seena Sharp will guide you to re-frame your thinking about the power of competitive intelligence and how it will benefit your organization and lead to the best decisions – the first time. The bonus is it will benefit you personally. This pragmatic presentation, filled with real-world examples, will deliver new ways of thinking that you can apply immediately, and is customized for competitive intelligence, marketing and strategy professionals.

Join the SCIP New York chapter and the SCIP Connecticut chapter on Thursday, June 6. Registration information is at the SCIP website.

Competitive Analysis Frameworks for Effective Product Management: SCIP Illinois Chapter, May 16

Knowing your competitors’ strategies can be the difference between your next product’s success or failure, and yet members of business leadership teams, marketers, product managers, and sales teams are often stretched too thin just “doing their job” to spend much time really analyzing the competition. You will learn how to gather the right information and examine it through time-tested analytical frameworks, such as Five Forces, Four Corners, ACH, and Scenario Planning, to get to the insights upon which strategic product portfolio decisions can be based.

During this session you will also learn how you can make the most of open source intelligence (OSINT) assets. Competitors often leave a trail of digital exhaust that can be seen across the internet. Importantly, you can examine this digital exhaust and determine where your competition is heading. What they’re planning, who they’re selling to, and how successful they’re being. We’ll show you how to go beyond Hoovers and LexisNexis — how to go beyond Google — and get competitive information from the “deep Web.” During this meeting you will learn how to use over 20+ free (or very cheap) web based tools to collect and intelligence from the web.

Join members of the SCIP Illinois Chapter at DePaul University O’Hare Campus on Thursday, May 16 to hear Sean Campbell of Cascade Insights reprise his popular 2013 SCIP annual conference presentation. Further information and registration are at the SCIP website.

Perspectives on Local Competitive Intelligence Practices, SCIP Atlanta Chapter, May 22

Join panelists Stacey Yeager (Marketplace Intelligence at Madheim), Monique Eddleton (Market Intelligence at ADP), Larry Fauconnet (Senior manager of CI at YP.com) and Melanie Wing (VP Strategic Marketing and Customer Insight, Equifax) for a lively discussion on local competitive intelligence practices. Held on Wednesday, May 22 at Cox Enterprises, Atlanta, panel members will share their insights on competitive intelligence. To register please go to the SCIP website.

You Can’t Manage Intelligence Unless You Track It: SCIP SW Ohio Chapter, June 12

Glen Brynteson, CEO of Market Awareness, will reprise his popular 2013 SCIP annual conference presentation, “You can’t manage intelligence unless you track it” for the SCIP SW Ohio Chapter on Wednesday, June 12. The presentation will step through identifying key intelligence indices for their company, grouping them into logical components, and establishing strategic and tactical tracking mechanisms. It will allow the audience to begin defining their own Competitive Intelligence framework and put the necessary pillars in place to ensure success.

Key Take-Aways:
1.  Hierarchy of all intelligence components and strategic action items, as well as, their associated tactical actions
2.  Five lessons learned from Fortune 500 companies and what they deem as their top key intelligence indices
3.  Templates will be provided on how they identify strategic actions and associated tactical plans
4.  Metrics identifying all key intelligence components

Speaker

In 1998, Glen Brynteson built his first professional services firm into a multinational consultancy by developing unique solutions to clients’ unmet needs. Fifteen years later, he has never stopped working to get closer to his customers to better understand their challenges and identify solutions that work to complement the decision-making process. In 2006 Mr. Brynteson launched his second firm, Market Awareness, in response to his own constant and unmet need for reliable, data-driven insight into his clients’ perspectives and perceptions. Since launching their one-of-a-kind competitive intelligence solution, Market Awareness has been met with overwhelming support at all levels of clients organizations, for companies of all sizes across all industries. Glen co-chairs the SCIP Austin, Texas chapter and was recently elected to serve on the SCIP Board of Directors 2013.

Public and Private Sector Intelligence Operations, SCIP Wisconsin, June 20

Wisconsin’s SCIP Chapter welcomes you back to the friendly confines of Lambeau Field, for a never-before-seen line-up of speakers and topics that we are sure will leave you energized to implement some of these strategies and tactics from the Public and Private sectors inside your businesses. Join us  on Thursday, June 20 for a full-day’s worth of speakers who will provide you the information to create your playbook and design your winning aspirations for how Intelligence can and should play a vital role within your organizations.

Matching Analytical Methods to Your Company’s Intelligence and Performance Needs: SCIP Chapter Event, May 30

Join the SCIP Missouri Chapter, the Pennsylvania/Delaware Chapter, the Iowa Chapter or the South Africa chapter on May 30 to hear Craig Fleisher and network with your fellow competitive intelligence professionals.

Intelligence practitioners have long recognized the importance of proper tasking in taking on important projects for their clients. What has often been overlooked, however, is the need to match up their KITs with analytical methods that can best support their client’s needs. In a number of key respects, pairing up analysis models and client’s needs is akin to on-line dating. Each analysis method has unique characteristics that make it better or worse meeting for the needs expressed by our clients. Practitioners need to take this relationship into account in order to optimize the other parts of their project cycles and to enhance the likelihood of delivering desired results. In this session, we’ll identify several demonstrated concepts that  “turbo-charge” the matching process, identify methods that match up particularly well with KIT/KIQ types, and share some new methods that you are probably not using presently that can be useful to you and your company’s ongoing intelligence efforts.

Registration information is on the SCIP website for the Missouri Chapter, the Pennsylvania/Delaware Chapter, the Iowa Chapter and the South Africa chapter

Strategy Mapping Competitors, Customers and Suppliers: SCIP Silicon Valley Chapter April 24

Join members of the SCIP Silicon Valley chapter on Wednesday April 24 to hear Michael Sandman describe how to build a competitor strategy map. Strategy maps focus on what it takes to execute strategy – the financial, customer-facing, operations and human and technical resources elements of strategy execution. Hundreds of the world’s largest corporations use strategy maps to align operations with strategic goals. The latest thinking in the C-Suite is to apply strategy maps to assess other companies as well to guide their own execution of strategy.

Based on the pioneering balanced scorecard work of Harvard Business School professors Kaplan and Norton and a recent article in the HBS Balanced Scorecard Report, this session will describe how to build a competitor strategy map and demonstrate how one can use strategy mapping. This approach takes business intelligence into the realm of anticipating what another player in the market can accomplish and provides a framework for comparing your own organization’s execution of strategy with that of competitors and the suppliers and customers on whom you depend.

Key Outcomes
•    Insight into another company’s operational strengths and weaknesses and the implications for your organization
•    An approach to providing early warning on competitor initiatives
•    A guide to demonstrating to management where your own firm may need to make operational adjustments

Michael Sandman is Senior Vice President of Fuld & Company.   He has an extensive background in international business, including responsibility for the transfer of technology to partners in Switzerland, Mexico and Brazil.   He runs war games for Fuld’s clients worldwide and advises on how to build robust competitive intelligence capabilities inside companies.  He has been a guest lecturer at the business schools of Columbia, Boston University, University of Wisconsin, University of California-Irvine and Harvard Business School.  In 2006 Mike was elected as a Fellow of his professional association, Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), and is one of only seven people who received the prestigious Faye Brill Award from SCIP.