The presentation by Alex King discusses the importance of competitive intelligence (CI) in improving bidding processes, emphasizing the need to better distinguish relevant information from noise. It provides various insights, including the essential components of CI for successful bids and case studies illustrating strategic missteps in competitive scenarios. Key takeaways include the significance of human behavior patterns, the necessity for thorough analysis, and the potential to enhance bid outcomes through effective CI.

2. COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE:
SIGNALS AND NOISE
Alex King, Amplio Services

3. Today
• This presentation will show…
• There is a large, unfulfilled need for better Competitive
Intelligence in bidding
• Money, or the lack thereof, is not the biggest barrier to
meeting this need
• Broadly speaking, the biggest problem is not a lack of
information, but distinguishing between what is and isn’t
relevant

4. DEFINING COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE
Competitive Intelligence, what is it?

5. What is CI?
• Definition: Using information about things outside
your organisation, to improve decision making within
your organisation – me, 2015
• Winning bids is a relative achievement. You win by offering
better value than your competitors.
• Competitive Intelligence (CI) is legal and ethical. The
practice of illegal activities is called ‘industrial espionage’. It
is not to be encouraged.

6. What CI do bids need?
As a minimum, any
strategic bid should
have the following CI:
1 - Customer Hot Buttons
2 – Bidder Comparison Matrix
3 – Win / Loss Analysis
4 – Price to Win

7. THE NEED FOR BETTER CI…
So why should I care?

8. 8
For Bid Managers…
In a survey of 178 bid
professionals
conducted with the
Association for Proposal
Management
Professionals (APMP)
“better competitive
intelligence” was
ranked as the 3rd
quickest way to improve
bid performance 1
1 How technology is changing Bidding (2014). Amplio Services

9. For Price to Win analysts…
In another survey of
Price to Win
analysts, 60% said
that “better
Competitive
Intelligence” would
have the quickest
improvement on
their results 2
2 Price to Win Survey (2014). Amplio Services

10. For Customers…
Customers are also
complaining that
bidders fail to
distinguish
themselves and
create a unique
value proposition 3
3 Bids & Proposals Customer Survey (2014). Amplio Services

11. CI: REASSURINGLY INEXPENSIVE
Interpretation is a bigger barrier than cost

12. Porters Four Corners
Competitors tend to
be more ‘defensive’
when they are close
to achieving their
goals
“When you have a
hammer, every
problem looks like
a nail” – Abraham
Maslow 1966
The better current
results are, the
more current
strategy is likely to
prevail
Intentions asides,
how good is the
competitor at
executing a
strategy?

13. Annual Reports
“We have witnessed
the benefits of the
Group’s long-standing
focus on credit quality
and the diversification
of our income streams
which have allowed us
to deliver record
profits” 4 – RBS, 2007
Motivational Drivers: Noise
4 Annual Report and Accounts (2007). Royal Bank of Scotland
5 Advances in Prospect Theory (1992). Daniel Kahenman & Amon Tversky
People are
approximately twice
as motivated to avoid
losses as they are to
seize opportunities 5

14. MANAGEMENT ASSUMPTIONS
Case Study: Vince McMahon, CEO World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)

15. Management Assumptions
In 1982 Vince
McMahon acquired
his fathers regional
wrestling
entertainment
company.
Vince McMahon
decided that
wrestling needed
glamour and
celebrity.

16. Management Assumptions
He recruited ‘Hulk
Hogan’ as the face of
his company and
promoted a 1985 Pay-
Per-View (PPV) event
‘Wrestlemania’
featuring Mr. T,
Muhammad Ali and
Cyndi Lauper.
Wrestlemania remains
a runaway commercial
success today.

17. Management Assumptions
Vince also felt that
Bodybuilding and
American Football needed
more glamour and
celebrity.
His attempts to launch
spin XFL (‘00) (to complete
with NFL) and WBF (‘91)
ended in disaster. XFL last
one season and was one
of the lowest-rated prime
time programs… ever 6
6 WWF drops XFL (2001). CNN Money

18. 18
Key Lesson One
It is human nature to
repeat patterns of
behaviour that
bought success in the
past. Understanding
formative
experiences of a
leader is a far better
predictor of future
behaviour than bland
statements of intent
in annual reports.

19. Key Lesson Two
Human nature is
biased towards
avoiding losses
rather the pursuing
gains. Despite Vince’s
success with PPV, the
biggest risk to his
business was
networks refusing to
broadcast his show…
So in 2014 he
launched his own
network.

20. Capabilities: Noise
S
SWOT analysis
There is no meaningful
distinction between internal
and external possibilities.
Peer reviews tend to result in
the most senior persons
opinion becoming the
consensus, with some highly
unlikely ‘wild cards’ thrown in
for good measure
W
O
T
illy
ay
f
hinking

21. Capabilities: Signal
Blind Spots
78% of SCIP respondents
said that “developing
strategy” was a key driver
for CI in their company,
compared to 33% for
“driving sales” 7
This mirrored an earlier
finding that 60% of members
were funded by strategy or
marketing, compared to just
13% by sales or business
development.
7 Career Planning Survey (2012). UKCIF

22. CAPABILITIES
Case Study: Millennium Challenge 2002

23. How not to do War Gaming
Millennium Challenge
2002: A War Gaming
exercise to test of the
U.S. ability to fight a
generic middle east
opponent..
Cost: $250m
Participants: >13,500

24. Blind Spots
“My belief at the outset of Millennium Challenge was that Blue
[America] believed it had a monopoly on pre-emption, and it
would strike first…I was going to get in the first blow” - Lieutenant
General Paul Van Riper, 2004
• Used small boats and suicide bombs to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier
fleet in the first 48 hours
• Used civilian motorcyclists to carry communications (i.e. not
satellite phones)
• Constantly retreated rather than fight pitched battles

25. Key Lesson Three
Paul Van Riper’s
team stunned the
US military because
they understood
their blind spots.
They didn’t need a
SWOT analysis or
focus on high
impact, low
probability
scenarios.

26. 26
A repeat of Hannibal?
72,000 - 86,000 Romans
faced 32,000 - 50,000 troops
led by Hannibal at the Battle
of Cannae (216 BC).
Unsurprisingly, the Romans
attacked first, using their
numerical advantage, straight
up the middle.
Hannibal anticipated this
most likely threat and
countered it by retreating,
then surrounding the Romans
creating a stunning upset.

27. CURRENT STRATEGY
*Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns and you
may not get back your original investment.

28. Signal: (Real) Win-Loss Analysis
Rarely is the question
asked: is our children
[organisation] learning?
– George Bush 2007
10 Campbell & Sedikides (1999). “Self-threat magnifies the self-serving bias”
“Individuals tend to
ascribe success to their
own abilities and efforts,
but ascribe failure to
external factors” 10

29. 29
More Noise: Re-organisations
Few activities contain more
noise and red herrings than
trying to make sense of a
competitors re-organisation.
A typical re-org has little to
do with strategy. It is a way
to avoid legal liabilities
when getting rid of people
and has certain tax benefits
when done in a specific way.

30. The Devil has too many advocates
“A significant part of future strategy
is a continuation of current strategy,
as most companies run on inertia,
and modification to strategy is
almost always tactical and
incremental, at ‘the margin’” 8
– Ben Gilad, author of Business Blind
Spots
8 Business War Games (2009). Ben Gilad

31. Get back in the box
“it’s easy to suggest
that people ‘think
outside the box’…but
most battles take
place within the box,
and the art of war
gaming to a large
extent is defining
successfully what this
box is for a
competitor’” 9
9 Business War Games (2009). Ben Gilad

32. SO WHAT?
Turning CI into ghosting, win themes and Position to Win

33. Generic Competitor Strategies
There are three generic
ways companies compete.
These are called ‘Value
Disciplines’: 11 12
Being the Cheapest
Having the best Quality
Using Customer Intimacy
11 Competitive Strategy (1980). Michael Porter.
12 Customer Intimacy and other Value Disciplines (1992). Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema.

34. Generic Customer Buying Types
We assess whether this customer can be assigned a
‘Customer Buying Type’ 13.
• Budget-Limited customers cannot afford the capability they want but
will spend all their available budget and usually be disappointed
• Capability-satisfied customers buy only what they need at the lowest
available price
• Best-value customers trade price against capability. Educated ones
understand the trade-offs between value and price.
13 Larry Newman (2011). Shipley Capture Guide v3.0, p122

35. How to Influence
Cost Leadership Focus Strategy Technical
Leadership
Capability Satisfied Supply pricing
information and create a
compelling event to
speed up the decision
Help your customer
explain the key trade offs
between extreme
positions
No Bid
Budget Limited Highlight the risks of
emerging technology vrs
certainty of current
pricing
Explain ‘tipping points’
to your customer to keep
requirements moderate
Demonstrate the whole
life cost argument
(usually new products
have cheaper support
costs)
Value for Money Highlight the risks of
emerging technology vrs
the benefits of proven
solutions
Explain ‘tipping points’
to your customer to keep
requirements
proportional the budget
Technology Roadmaps
that highlight ‘false
economies’ of yesterdays
technology

36. The Gold Standard
The gold standard of
Competitive
Intelligence is when
you understand it
well enough to
create counter-
intelligence and
misdirection for
your competitors

37. Key Skills to Take Away
Thorough Win-Loss, Executive
Profiles and Blind Spot analysis
Re-organisations, annual
reports and pseudo-strategy
Signal Noise
Focus on what your strongest
competitors most likely moves
will be
SWOT and worrying about
every competitor who could
enter a bid
Ghosting your competitors
with logical win themes
Giving disproportionate
attention to low probability
events

38. Legal Notice
The photos in this presentation are used under a Creative
Commons license, credit for them is attributed to:
– “RBS Bailout”. Source: http://www.worldfinance.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Bailouts-659x380.jpg accessed: 24/08/2014
– “Ed Strangler Lewis”. Source: http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=101407&t=w accessed: 24/08/2014
– “Wrestlemania 29”. Source: http://mms.businesswire.com/media/20140401005638/en/409823/5/WM+29.jpg accessed: 24/08/2014
– “XFL”. Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/XflNight.JPG accessed: 24/08/2014
– “Wrestlemania 1”. Source: https://ringthedamnbell.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/wrestlemania1.jpg accessed: 24/08/2014
– “Kiss My Ass Club”. Source: https://images.rapgenius.com/9a298e04daab243bac4dd99063d0016a.500x375x1.png accessed: 24/08/2014
– “Millennium Challenge 2002”. Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/immutable-nature-war.html accessed: 24/08/2014
– “Real War”. Source: http://devxstudiv.org/uploads/posts/2010-09/14/36421-2-fd23d64f610dd35a5453438347e51f8b.jpg accessed: 24/08/2014
– “Battle of Canne”. Source: http://www.thehistorykids.net/CRJ/media/cannae.png accessed: 24/08/2014
– “Organisational Restructuring”. Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/6122.jpg accessed: 24/08/2014
– “BT internet Kiosk”. Source: http://www.perfectpixels.com/limeys/photos/kiosk2-lg.jpg accessed: 24/08/2014
– “Too Big to Fail? – New Coke: things you need to know!”. Source: https://nicheiima.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/too-big-to-fail-new-coke-things-you-need-to-know/ accessed:
24/08/2014
– “Operation Mincemeat”. Source: http://walkergeorgefilms.co.uk/images_126/stories/gallery/display/010.jpg.jpg accessed: 24/08/2014