ICI Battle: Smart Tools for Effective CI/MI

Favorite tools for Competitive/Market Intelligence 2021

Many CI/MI professionals struggle to get their job done – given the high complexity and a heavy workload!
The good news is that there are many smart tools for supporting individuals to automate MI/CI routine jobs or for extending the number of tasks that individuals can handle.

In our 2021 Smart Tools Battle, eight CI professionals demonstrated their experience with their favorite tools. It could be observed that many of the tools presented allow much faster and more comprehensive data collection or analysis, beyond what you might expect.

Is it for you? 

Do you still compile data from LinkedIn manually and lack a complete picture of recruits or primary intelligence targets?

Karen Azulai, a global sourcing trainer, showed us how to do this in seconds using recruiting tools and some dedicated Chrome plugins.

Do you need to find suppliers, clients, competitors, or product prices?

Kenan Mahmutoglu, an experienced CI/MI professional, showed us how to use trade databases to find specific information efficiently.

Do you need to map complex markets and analyze these maps to find key competitors, suppliers, or clients?

Trip Krant showed us how to find insights in these complex relationships using a network analysis tool called Kumu.io. The applications are manifold, e.g. finding bottlenecks and identifying risks in a supply chain, mapping M&A activities, or mapping the complex relations within an industry.

Do you need to follow competitor activities in complex markets with dozens of competitors and hundreds of actors on a daily basis?

Aristide Lucet, Strategic Analyst at Limagrain, explained how to use Gephi, another network analysis tool, to analyze competitor activities like divestments and restructuring. The tool also allows the user to analyze and visualize complex collaboration networks within the industry.

Do you need to go further and track competitor activities, and merge and map the data in order to analyze it?

Amir Fleischman, Managing Director of Cicom Global, showed us how to do this using a very versatile tool called Maltego. Using a drag&drop interface, it can merge data from different sources and map competitors very efficiently. The strong point of Maltego is that there are many predefined data sources and predefined transformations that can be used to set up maps very easily and quickly.

Do you want to gather competitor data from sales and provide them with targeted information to improve sales efficiency?

Tracy Berry shows us how to use a CRM tool like Salesforce for win/loss analysis, battle cards pricing, competitor information, and more.
The main idea is to collect data and provide analysis seamlessly through a tool that the sales team is already using on a daily basis. 

Do you need to visualize competitor or market data efficiently?

Ralitsa Popova, co-founder of Rubinlake, showed us some examples of how to use Tableau to do this. Tableau is a very intuitive tool that allows the quick generation of all kinds of visualizations, connecting it to either ad-hoc data or even real-time data.

Do you want to see how professionals combine different sources (social media, databases, and expert knowledge) using a set of tools to create a comprehensive analysis?

Not every analysis can be done by a single tool. Especially if it comes to very different sources that need specific processing, analysis, and human evaluation – and all this in an ongoing and real-time environment. Johan Hammarlund shows us how to combine the best of breed to generate a complete and comprehensive CI/MI system.

List of the favorite Competitive/Market Intelligence tools 2021 mentioned in our Smart Tools Battle

Visualization tools

Network analysis

OSINT tools

Further tools used in a mixed media example

Data source providers
(very industry-specific – below are just some examples)

People information

Trade databases

 

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