#Business intelligence definition english full#
In France, a Specialized Master in Economic Intelligence and Knowledge Management was created in 1995 within the CERAM Business School, now SKEMA Business School, in Paris, with the objective of delivering a full and professional training in Economic Intelligence. These issues were widely discussed by over a dozen knowledgeable individuals in a special edition of the Competitive Intelligence Magazine that was dedicated to this topic. Although the general view would be that competitive intelligence concepts can be readily found and taught in many business schools around the globe, there are still relatively few dedicated academic programs, majors, or degrees in the field, a concern to academics in the field who would like to see it further researched. A number of efforts have been made to discuss the field's advances in post-secondary (university) education, covered by several authors including Blenkhorn & Fleisher, Fleisher, Fuld, Prescott, and McGonagle. SCIP has since been renamed "Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals" to emphasise the strategic nature of the subject, and also to refocus the organisation's general approach, while keeping the existing SCIP brandname and logo. Due to financial difficulties in 2009, the organization merged with Frost & Sullivan under the Frost & Sullivan Institute. In 1986, the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) was founded in the United States and grew in the late 1990s to around 6,000 members worldwide, mainly in the United States and Canada, but with large numbers especially in the UK and Australia. The first professional certification program (CIP) was created in 1996 with the establishment of The Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence in Cambridge, Massachusetts. However, the institutionalization of CI as a formal activity among American corporations can be traced to 1988, when Ben and Tamar Gilad published the first organizational model of a formal corporate CI function, which was then adopted widely by US companies. In 1985, Leonard Fuld published his best selling book dedicated to competitor intelligence. This has since been extended most notably by the pair of Craig Fleisher and Babette Bensoussan, who through several popular books on competitive analysis have added 48 commonly applied competitive intelligence analysis techniques to the practitioner's tool box. In 1980, Michael Porter published the study Competitive-Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors which is widely viewed as the foundation of modern competitive intelligence. in the 1970s, although the literature on the field pre-dates this time by at least several decades. Although elements of organizational intelligence collection have been a part of business for many years, the history of competitive intelligence arguably began in the U.S. It is also a tool for decision making.ĬI literature is best exemplified by the bibliographies that were published in the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals' academic journal The Journal of Competitive Intelligence and Management. The term CI is often viewed as synonymous with competitor analysis, but competitive intelligence is more than analyzing competitors it embraces the entire environment and stakeholders: customers, competitors, distributors, technologies, and macroeconomic data. This definition focuses attention on the difference between dissemination of widely available factual information (such as market statistics, financial reports, newspaper clippings) performed by functions such as libraries and information centers, and competitive intelligence which is a perspective on developments and events aimed at yielding a competitive edge.
Īnother definition of CI regards it as the organizational function responsible for the early identification of risks and opportunities in the market before they become obvious ("early signal analysis").
Some CI professionals erroneously emphasise that if the intelligence gathered is not usable or actionable, it is not intelligence. There is a process involved in gathering information, converting it into intelligence and then using it in decision making.
The focus is on the external business environment.Competitive intelligence is a legal business practice, as opposed to industrial espionage, which is illegal.