Competitive Intelligence: Do Free Resources do the Biz? [Archive]

Competitive Intelligence: Can Free Sources do the Biz? Karen Blakeman Wednesday 3 rd December 2008 Online Information 2008 11:15 - 11:45 - Gallery Rooms 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk Karen Blakeman RBA Information Services Tel: 0118 947 2256 Int. Tel: +44 118 947 2256 [email_address] http://www.rba.co.uk/ blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/ on Facebook – Karen Blakeman Twitter: karenblakeman This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

What is competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process of monitoring the competitive environment and analyzing the findings in the context of internal issues, for the purpose of decision support.
SCIP – Society of Competitive Intelligence professionals
Competitors, suppliers, customers, potential acquisitions, potential partners and alliances
Past and current state of the market and industry
Forecasts
Legal, regulatory, political, economic and cultural environment
6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Company information
The ‘big boys’ - stock exchange companies are relatively easy
Share price information
Yahoo Finance (‘major’ stock markets only)
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/
Google Finance
http://www.google.co.uk/finance http://www.google.com/finance/
Go direct to the stock market site
RBA Stock Markets and Share Price Information
http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htm

Yahoo – share price comparisons
For example, share price trends– compare a company with its main competitors, its sector and the main index

Google Finance 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Share price information
Companies that have
ceased trading
merged
been taken off the stock exchange
More detailed analyses, comparisons, customised reports
Priced services!

Company financials - free resources
Stock exchange listed companies
company’s own web site
SEC Edgar (soon to be replaced by IDEA) http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml , SEDAR http://www.sedar.com/ (Canada)
Smaller companies
official company registries, for example http://www.companies-house.gov.uk/
Official Company Registers
http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm
Sole traders
no financials
use directories especially export and membership directories
might not find any information at all apart from name and address

Historical annual reports - SCoRe
http://www.score.ac.uk/
SCoRe ( S earch Co mpany Re ports)
Catalogue of printed company reports, both current and historic, held in UK libraries
Libraries that hold copies of the reports are listed together with the earliest and latest years of a collection’s holdings
A good place to pick up clues on past corporate relationships

Company financials – free vs priced
Free
good for just a few known companies and current information
often limited to larger, quoted companies
Priced
for identifying a group of companies using several criteria
by sector, country, turnover, number of employees etc.
for extra download formats, analysis options
for cross country searching
access to information on dissolved companies
access to older information
beware services offering you ‘hard to find’ information at extortionate prices

Looking at a company’s web site history
Wayback Machine
http://www.archive.org/
takes periodic snapshots of web sites around the world
shows how they were presenting and marketing themselves and their products in the past
not guaranteed to work
domain name may have been owned by someone else in the past

http://www.archive.org/ 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Directories
Use directories to track down information on smaller companies
Industry/market research
need to use several sources to get as comprehensive a picture as possible
Search on industry/sector name and directory OR directories
Google
oil OR petroleum directory OR directories
Exalead.com, Live.com, MSE360.com
(oil OR petroleum) AND (directory OR directories)

Industry and market information
Free
general statistics
demographics, government statistics, industry overviews, “anonymous” data
Priced
industry specific market shares
named companies
brand names
detailed rankings

Statistics key starting points
Statistics Sources
http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stats.htm
Official Statistics on the Web
http://w ww.offstats.auckland.ac .nz
Nationmaster
http://www.nationmaster.com
UK Official Statistics
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/default.asp
often get better results by running a Google advanced site search

Free industry and market research
Individual publishers
tables of contents, executive summaries, free sample chapters
Government reports
Management consultants
Company annual reports
Academic sector
Trade and industry press
Take care when combining data from different sources
coverage, sample size, method of collection, and analysis will be different for each source

www.alacrawiki.com 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Market and industry research
Free
government bodies e.g. http://www.export.gov/ , http://www.bisnis.doc.gov/
regulatory bodies e.g. in the UK - Competition Commission
trade, industry, manufacturing associations, trade and industry press
http://www.reportlinker.com/
searches free resources but you have to pay to refine and display results
http://www.free-research.com/
browse and display free resources, includes references to priced research
http://www.researchwikis.com/
mixed quality, often US biased and not all the data is sourced or referenced

http://www.reportlinker.com/ 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

http://www.free-research.com/ 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

http://www.researchwikis.com/ 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Search engines
Try and imagine what you would like to appear in your ideal document
Use terms such as “market share”, “household expenditure”, “per capita”
Google numeric range search
TV advertising spend forecasts 2008..2015
Repeat the most important term(s) in your search one or more times
Change the order of your search terms
Limit your search to a type of organisation e.g. gov.uk
Limit your search to specific document formats e.g. xls, doc, pdf
Use Google, Yahoo, Live …and give MSE360 a go

Intellectual capital
Key people, ‘know how’, expertise
R&D pipeline
products/services now in the market
products/services in active development
products/services in initial research stage
Availability of information varies depending on industry
e.g. information on highly regulated pharmaceutical industry is available through priced services
monitor trade and industry journals, newsletters, magazines
Patents - beware free services as these are not comprehensive
if ‘mission critical’, hire the services of an experienced patent searcher
Trademarks, brand names, slogans and advertising

Advertising
Run a search on Google video and YouTube to track down television and cinema adverts
Visit4Info
http://www.visit4info.com /
European press, TV, cinema - last 3 months of adverts free
Adforum
http://www.adforum.com/
Creative Club
http://www.creativeclub.co.uk/
Adslogans
http://www.adslogans.co.uk/
Adverteyes
http://www.adverteyes.biz /
who said what, where and when – now priced
Coloribus.com - Advertising Archive
http://www.coloribus.com/

Video, audio, images and other ‘stuff’
Check out video and audio search tools for interviews, television and radio news items
Corporate communication via YouTube channel
http://www.blinkx.com/ for television and cable news services
Flickr photos may reveal additional information on events, sponsorships and links to other companies and people
Facebook?
Twitterstream?

News
Free
check coverage, archives, search options
for individual newspapers
http://www.abyznewslinks.com/
http://www.kidon.com/media-link/index.php
search engine news options e.g. Yahoo, Google, Live, Ask
have only the last 30 days of free news
advanced search options limited and unreliable
no source list, and sources frequently change
key industry publications may not be included

News
Individual publications and newspapers, BBC, radio (audio), television (video) etc
Silobreaker
http://www.silobreaker.com/
Chipwrapper
http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/

covers free resources
news, blogs, video, images
geographical location of stories
people
networks
use as a starting point for more in depth research

Chipwrapper.co.uk
Google Custom Search engine
Searches everything available on 15 free UK News Sites
No date sort option but typing in the month and year sometimes works

News
Individual publications and newspapers, BBC, radio (audio), television (video) etc
Silobreaker
Chipwrapper
http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/
Archive news
some web based news sources and individual publications go back several years and are free
subscription and pay as you go options such as Factiva and LexisNexis
far better for highly focussed, targeted research

Blogs as sources of information
Blogs by industry gurus and experts are a good way of keeping up to date with what is happening in a sector
Look for the Blogroll on a relevant blog
Google Blogsearch http://www.google.com/blogsearch
Ask.co.uk – Blogs and feeds
Live Feeds search - http://search.live.com/feeds
Blog and feed search engines, directories
http://www.technorati.com/
http://www.blogpulse.com/

Blogpulse 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk Click on the graph to see “Trends”

Blogpulse Trends 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk Shows how often your search terms occur in postings – can compare up to three searches

Cluuz
http://www.cluuz.com/
Uses the Yahoo database
“ cluster graphs, image extraction, and tag clouds”
Quickly updated and dynamic maps
Results vary from one day to the next, one hour to the next

Cluuz 6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

So can free resources do the biz?
Up to a point
Priced services can save you time, may offer more focused searching and more analytical options
Free can help with
highly specialised, niche markets
“ difficult to find” information on certain types of companies
rumour, gossip
You need to use both

6 June 2009 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk Karen Blakeman RBA Information Services Tel: 0118 947 2256 Int. Tel: +44 118 947 2256 [email_address] http://www.rba.co.uk/ blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/ on Facebook – Karen Blakeman Twitter: karenblakeman This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License UKeiG Stand 734

Competitive Intelligence: Do Free Resources do the Biz? [Archive]

by Karen Blakeman on Dec 03, 2008

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