Financial analysis is part of environmental scanning and industry analysis. The goal is to assess competitors’ past and future performance, financial stability, and potential bankruptcy. Because it requires finance skills, competitor financial analysis should be done by the accounting or finance departments as part of their routine duties.
Win/loss analysis is a postmortem performed after a major potential business-to-business or business-togovernment sale is won or lost. The objective is to find out why the particular result occurred. It involves assessment of the winner’s offering (e.g., lower in price? higher in quality?) compared to your own and/or that of others. Such analyses must be brutally honest if you are to learn. There are (expensive) third-party consultants specializing in such analyses who often can find out what really happened—rather than the courteous but uninformative answers you often get from potential clients.
Scenarios are stories about the implications of alternative choices. They provide a way to communicate with managers and non-experts. Scenarios are used to describe consequences for the firm and its competitors based on choices the organization and/or its competitors can make.
For example, after the Sarbanes-Oxley act was passed by the U.S., foreign companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges had several choices, including:
■■ Retrofit their information systems to comply with the new regulations.
■■ Gradually move their stocks to other exchanges. (The decision to move had to take into account the financial impact of doing so and the possibility that non–U.S. stock exchanges would follow the SarbanesOxley model.)
CoMPETITIvE InTELLIGEnCE
The scenario approach is a useful tool to investigate possibilities. Although scenarios are not predictions of what will be, they do describe some of the situations that might evolve. To create a scenario:
■■ Select the key variables of interest and estimate their values and probabilities for you and your competitors under different sets of assumptions. The assumptions (e.g., level of GNP growth, timing of technological developments, competitor response) form a
“scenario space.”
■■ The output of CI analysis can be used to generate scenarios. Each scenario must be possible, plausible, and internally consistent.
Scenarios provide the basis for determining the mismatches between current policy and anticipated (future) situations and point to options that guard against undesirable outcomes.
Whereas scenarios produce alternative futures based on changes in assumptions, war games are multi-player simulations in which members of the firm form several teams, each representing a particular role. For example, one team represents (or is) the firm’s management. Other teams represent main competitors, stakeholders, and the market. One team starts the simulation by introducing a change in the status quo (e.g., a new product or a merger). The other teams respond to the change; some take counter-actions; others accept the change. The game typically involves multiple rounds of action and reaction.
War games are used to understand threats from current and future competitors, changes in the external environment, and disruptive technologies. They also bring insight into the long-term effects of a particular decision, including strategic opportunities.
Just as you perform competitive intelligence about other firms, they will perform competitive intelligence about you. Just as they have a need to advertise and market themselves, you need to get the word out about what you
CoMPETITIvE InTELLIGEnCE
do and what you can do. You must not disclose too much; restrict information flow wherever possible. If you are a public company, there is a minimum of information that you must divulge in your 10K reports to the government. However, you are under no obligation to do more. The more you divulge, the more your competitors can find out about you.
Уважаемый посетитель!
Чтобы распечатать файл, скачайте его (в формате Word).
Ссылка на скачивание - внизу страницы.