The Adaptable Role Competitive Intelligence Plays in These 5 Strategic Planning Models

With Strategic Planning season in full bloom, many motivated enterprises are exploring how to best use competitive intelligence to gain more momentum in meeting next year’s goals. Strategic planning programs, however, invariably vary from one company, or even one industry, to the next. Much of competitive intelligence’s value is in its chameleon-like ability to change colors depending on which of the five most common types of strategic planning schemes an organization employs. Understanding and developing a competitive intelligence program that can best match up with and support your specific strategic planning model will go a long way toward ensuring the success of your strategic plan.

This model is a common approach that seeks to score where your business is and is not performing. Developing growth strategies and strategies to solve underperforming parts of the company are key goals. In this scenario, CI is used to 1) update and review competitive profiles; 2) produce awareness briefs on key or rising threats, and 3) better understand strategic direction and anticipate benchmarking activities. Leveraging strategic SWOTs is a key advantage that can help inform your leadership of its options.

This model is a common approach that seeks to score where your business is and is not performing. Developing growth strategies and strategies to solve underperforming parts of the company are key goals. In this scenario, CI is used to 1) update and review competitive profiles; 2) produce awareness briefs on key or rising threats, and 3) better understand strategic direction and anticipate benchmarking activities. Leveraging strategic SWOTs is a key advantage that can help inform your leadership of its options.

This newer model is focused on navigating or even becoming a change agent in the market, with disruption being the key cornerstone of this approach. Here, CI profiles or monitors less-traditional competitors who can disrupt customer behavior, providing leadership threat assessments prioritized by level of disruptive capability. CI includes the voice of customer work to threat analysis deliverables and may also have an M&A evaluation component to help your business develop a target list.

This approach seeks to provide your leadership with several different strategies to execute based upon market, competitive, and customer changes. This process helps mitigate risk and produce strategies that can provide ROI in any event. In this instance CI becomes more dynamic, leveraging wargaming events to help develop your team test strategies before they are finalized. CI may also execute profiles of competitive leadership or benchmarking how organizations make decisions or even identify how quickly competitors can adapt and what adaptation looks may look like.

This newer, scenario-based approach focuses on self-organizing strategy development through storyboarding and iterative discussions. The output of these discussions comprises a list of goals and objectives that help your strategy become reality. Within this strategic planning module, CI is used to prepare for research needs that have narrowed timelines. CI enables your business to create and provide profiles on competitive behavior, and also leverages the voice of customer research to help provide a more complete picture of your business.
We hope these tips provide some insight into the next steps with constructive options for your business during this season of strategic planning. For more information, please visit www.proactiveworldwide.com

Proactive Worldwide, Inc. is a global research and strategic intelligence consulting firm that provides evidence-based, constructive information within the competitive intelligence, market intelligence, and customer insights domains. Anchored by primary source research for over 22 years, PWW’s multilingual professionals assist clients with offerings that include but are not limited to market intelligence and competitive research services, market entry and defense strategies, war gaming workshops and scenario planning events, and customer experience and voice of customer studies.