The number of companies that are successfully deploying various kinds of Competitive Intelligence (CI) portal solutions are constantly growing. The phrases CI portals, Intelligence systems, CI tools, MI portals are heard everywhere, but what do they really mean? And why should you really care?

1. Introduction to Competitive Intelligence Portals
The What, Why and How of Using IT Tools
to Support Your Intelligence Work
By Jesper Martell & Gabriel Anderbjörk, Comintelli

2. About Us
Comintelli is a Swedish software company that provides
systems and platforms for market and competitive intelligence.
Jesper Martell
Founder & CEO, Comintelli
Gabriel Anderbjörk
Founder & CFO, Comintelli

3. Agenda
• 1. What and Why? (10 min)
– What is a CI portal
– Why do you need one?
• 2. How does a portal support the
Intelligence process? (20 min)
– Planning
– Connecting Sources
– Analysis
– Processing & Distribution
• 3. How do you select an Intelligence Portal
that suits your requirements? (20 min)
– Key Features
– Dealing with IT
– Suppliers
• Questions & Answers (10 min)

4. 1. What and Why?
What is an Intelligence Portal?
Why do you need an Intelligence Portal?

5. CI is NOT about gathering information

6. What is Competitive Intelligence (CI)?
• It´s not a 007 operation
• It´s not reading tons of newspapers
• It´s not bribing employees of competitors
It’s:
The process of systematically
gathering, analyzing and managing information
about the market & business environment that is used
to improve an organizations competitive advantage.

7. What is an Intelligence Portal?
• Single, centralized IT platform for:
– Collection
– Storage
– Processing
– Dissemination
• Both internal and external
information

8. • Automates your CI process and
frees up time for analysis.
• Support the intelligence work by
being a one stop shop allows self
service.
• Helps build up an intelligence
culture
• Excellent marketing tool for CI
Why do you need a CI Portal?

9. Who are the users?
C-level
executives
Intelligence Network
All Employees
Buy-in!
Engagement!
Awareness!

10. 2. How does a portal support
the Intelligence process?

11. Planning
&
Direction
Collection
of
Sources
Process &
storage
Analysis
Dissemin
ation
The Intelligence Cycle

12. 1. Planning and Direction

13. What information is important for CI?
• A CI Taxonomy consists of topics that
reflects the industry and highlights
information that is important to the
organization.
• Intelligence Topics are NOT based on
what available information is about,
but rather on what the users need.
• This means that there may e.g. be
empty topics with no information in a
CI taxonomy.

14. 2. Collecting Sources
EXTERNAL SOURCES
(OPEN & COMMERCIAL)
INTERNAL SOURCES PORTAL

15. 3. Processing
• Indexing and tagging
• Approving and editing
• Assessing relevancy
• Recommending
• Translating
• Selecting content for
different target groups

16. 4. Analysis
• Visualize the content
and its development
over time and in
context graphically.
• Support standard
analytical methods;
SWOT, Porter 5,
Benchmarks, etc.

17. 5. Dissemination
• Distribute relevant
intelligence to the right
persons at the right time.
• User friendly! Easy!
• Automated Alerts
• Reports and Newletters

18. 3. How do you select a CI Portal
that suits your requirements?

19. Selecting an Intelligence portal
• Many different options available
• What suits a company best
depends on its CI process and
organization
• Different vendors have different
focus and strengths
• You need to have a good
understanding of what your
organization needs now and in
future

20. Evolution of CI Portals
E-mail and Shared
folders are main
methods of sharing and
storing information.
Ad hoc deliverables and
little coordination or
structure.
Common intranet is
used as central storage
and access.
Web (eg Google Alerts)
are used to collect
information.
Newsletters and reports
generated.
Web based CI portal
provides access to
structured (taxonomy)
information
Systematic monitoring of
external sources
E-mail alerts are used to
notify users.
Internal information and
primary information also
included in one single
place.
Collaboration among
users.
Multiple dashboards and
acess groups.
Single Sign On
Mobile interfaces
Analysis tools are used
to visualize information.
Expertise location and
Gamification aspects
Well integrated with
other systems
Active social sharing.
Informal
Basic
Intermediate
Advanced
World Class

21. Dealing with the IT department
• Policy Compliance
– Security concerns
– Favored suppliers
– Design guidelines
• Integrations with other
systems
• Overhead IT costs (servers)
• Time and prioritizations
• Either dont involve IT at all
or involve IT very early

22. But can’t you just Google it...
• Google makes us smarter and stupider at the
same time…
• Relevance? Google is paid ads and popularity
driven
• Sources? Google does not index every page on
internet. Does not cover all sources you need.
Many sources are not available on internet.
• Processing? Many tools are better at
aggregating in more meaningful ways from a CI
perspective (eg Google searches are affected by
history, location, browser version, cookies, etc)
• Security? You leave traces behind…

23. But we can build it ourselves...
• Build you own or buy ready made CI
software?
– Yes, building your own CI portal enables a
perfect match to your current work process
– BUT developing your own requires software
skills and maintenance resources. You should
focus on CI analysis
– Experience shows that it tales longer time &
costs more in the long run
– Share best practices with others. You are
seldom as unique as you may think…

24. But we have SharePoint...
• If SharePoint is already in the organization
it can be worthwhile exploring the option
of building something on top of it..
• But can be time consuming and epxensive
• IT are not CI experts (and viceversa).
• ”For every dollar spent on a SharePoint
license you need to spend another 6-9
dollars to make it work”
- Microsoft website

25. Intelligence Portal vendors

26. • Content aggregation
– Abillity to connect content from internal and
external sources
– Ability to add RSS feeds and web crawlers
• Content management
– Ability to produce reports
– Ability to input via web and mobile interface
• Classification
– Ability to manually and/or automatically
filter/tag/archive content (taxonomy)
• Search
– Ability to free text search across all content types in
one place
– Ability to rank by date/relevancy
• User experience and distribution
– Ability to access via web or mobile device
– Ability to create personalized e-mail alerts
Key features to look for:

27. • Visual Analytics
– Ability to visualize using charts, trends, tag clouds,
heat maps, etc.
– Ability to benchmark profiles
• Collaboration
– Ability to comment/recommend articles
– Ability to set up different dashboards
– Ability to chat and e-mail forward
– Ability to locate other users and experts
• Administration
– Ability to set up users, topics, feeds by yourself
– Usage statistics
• Control & Security
– Ability to have secure user authentication
– Ability to encrypt stored information
– Ability to manage user access rights
– Ability to approve articles
• Scalability & Flexibility
– Ability to grow in terms of users, topics, sources
– bility to customize and integrate with third party
software and content providers
Key features to look for:

28. 7 Key Success Factors
1. Sufficient budget and
management sponsorship
2. Good understanding of user needs
3. Effective taxonomy
4. All relevant intelligence content
stored in one searchable place
5. Simple, clear user interface
6. Daily e-mail alerts (newsletter
style)
7. Internal branding and marketing
to activate users

29. Thank you for your attention!
Questions & Answers?
jesper.martell@comintelli.com
www.comintelli.com