Competitive Intelligence, the Internet and you

By Mark Tygart

There's a story that I love that came out of the collapse of the Cold War, about a highly decorated KGB Spymaster who revealed his superior techniques when his job was finally phased out of existence by the newest wave of boyars and bureaucrats. The greatest challenge, he explained; was supplying Moscow with tales of the bogus spies he had recruited to supply him with the political intelligence his masters back in Moscow craved. The actual sources? American newspapers, magazines, and television shows provided both the factual and analytical basis for his reports. CNN it seemed was more likely to understand who was in bed with whom at the White House than any antiquated Cold War spook.

Whether true or not the story points out a truth that I'm often reminded for on my job as an information broker. The truth, it seems, really is generally out there. And it usually being offered for a new, low bargain rate over the Internet. The public perception of competitive intelligence is that we're a bunch of corporate spooks, but the truth about the profession is more Marion the Librarian than James Bond, and more prose than poetry.

In most industries with the onset of the "information revolution" the biggest single problem is being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of corporate data, and then struggling to find actionable intelligence among the flotsam and jetsam. I tend to turn to a variety of information providers for some useful secondary data when I first start investigating a market.

The single greatest corporate database easily accessible to the average person has been created and maintained by the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, which a veritable Mongol horde of researchers calling everybody in the country to find out who is literally who. The chief failing of the Dun & Bradstreet database is that aspects depend on the honesty of the business owner. The figure that tends to be "massaged" most often is the sales figures, so veteran analysts tend to focus on the number of employees. For a number of reasons this figure is rarely deliberately falsified. AIMCAL members can access the Dun & Bradstreet Database with a credit card and Internet access at http://www.dnb.com/. Reports run anywhere from twenty dollars to several hundred dollars, so I'd advise to watch what your buying.

Research is generally produced to generate or contribute towards generating a profit. For an affordable source of industry research reports generated to track public companies in your industry are often an excellent source of information. A good place to start is http://www.hoovers.com/, an excellent source of data on public data with a wonderful set of links to industry resources and research. Formal research reports can be bought with a credit card from the information service provider Multex at this site. The federal government's free EDGAR corporate database of public company filings is also available at this site. Both can be relatively cheap and easy ways of scaring up some general data on your market.

The telephone is probably the single greatest resource informational resource ever invented. I've often been struck by the graciousness of both trade associations and industry reporters who cover a particularly technical or scattered corporate beat. A good place to start is the Media finder directory at http://www.mediafinder.com/index.cfm. For industry people seeking a wider universe of companies I like the Thomas Register site at http://www.thomasregister.com/.

The struggle to make sense of this maelstrom of data is what separates the researcher from the mere surfer. It often comes down to remembering why you've become lost in the vast virtual library that is the Internet in the first place. I usually represent buyers and sellers of middle market businesses. So I often repeat mantras to myself about buyers for particular clients or factors that affect the value of a company in a certain industry. Your mantra should be whatever the problem is that you need data to translate into actionable intelligence to help you solve. Our arguably fictional spy is a good reality check. After the Cold War Western operatives marveled at the quality of the data that eastern bloc spies had discovered about NATO countries. The harsh reality was such data was simply ignored by the political elite back in Moscow for both ideological and pragmatic reasons. As a result many historians feel that all that superb intelligence had a negligible outcome on both Soviet policies and the outcome of the Cold War. Something to remember, researcher comrade.

Mark Tygart is a professional information broker.

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