Information Outlook, Vol. 6, No. 12, December 2002
Competitive Intelligence for the Information Center
By Barbie E. Keiser
Barbie E. Keiser is an information resources management consultant located in the Metro DC area.
Know Your Competitiors
Information professionals are often called upon to participate in an organization's competitive intelligence program, and they do so in a variety of capacities, playing key roles in the development and maintenance of the process. While they help firms develop effective competitive strategies, information professionals rarely apply the same evaluative techniques to their own operations. This article examines the basic elements of a competitive intelligence program as applied to a library/information center setting.
In the Beginning...
You cannot monitor the activities or develop a comprehensive profile of your competitors if you are not clear as to who they are, so Step 1 in the competitive intelligence process is to identify your competition. Loosely defined, your competitors are any people or institutions with the capability of offering information services to the audience you have targeted as your own. The field is no longer limited by geography, as users can contract with anyone, anywhere—academic or public libraries, information or documentation centers, independent brokers, consultants, direct access databases offered by various vendors, or Web-based resources.
In determining which libraries you will monitor, and to what extent, consider both your current and potential competitors (i.e., those who, with slight changes, could easily offer products or services similar to your own). The latter category should include competitors from within your organization—other departments, such as marketing, public relations, or IT—as well as those outside, regardless of apparent barriers, such as geography or language.
It is also important to consider what is happening in the field of information and library science. Identify libraries that are considered leaders, regardless of their location. Who are the innovators and why are they so successful? These are the organizations against which you will want to benchmark your operations in a never-ending attempt to "be the best" in the eyes of your customer base, the larger organization/institution, and the professional library/information community. Study those organizations and analyze:
· What they are doing;
· Their rationale for offering the products and services they do;
· The degree to which their deliverables are polished and professional looking;
· The markets they are targeting; and
· The methods they are using to promote their libraries to the public.
Choose at least one competitor from each category and, overall, one or two that are considered "best in class" (i.e., those recognized as leaders because of their quality customer service, product offerings, or technology innovation). These are the organizations you will want to monitor on an ongoing basis and use initially in your competitive intelligence effort. After determining who the competition is—and how this group is likely to change over time—you and your staff should consider both the pressures and opportunities this group of current and potential competitors creates for your library/information center.
The Next Steps
Step 2 of the competitive intelligence process involves the selection of criteria that will allow you to benchmark your operations against those of the competition.
Select both the qualitative and quantitative information you will need to adequately assess your competitors' strengths, weaknesses, and strategies. These indicators or measures will help you understand not only what your competitors are doing but why it does or does not work. What you need to know about your competitors falls into six broad categories: background, finance, products, markets, facilities, and personnel.
Now that it's clear what you will have to learn about your competition, you need to implement a procedure for gathering these data. This is Step 3 in the competitive intelligence process. Employ a variety of methods for collecting the data you need, conducting both primary and secondary research.
· Identify papers presented at conferences by staff members of your main competitors.
· Search databases for articles written by staff members of your main competitors.
· Read any articles written about your competitors that mention their information operations.
· Conduct a formal survey, or hire a third party to do so (particularly useful in obtaining compensation range data).
· Speak informally with professional colleagues and vendors.
· Network with library directors for personnel data and the "inside scoop."
· See what information is available from library directories (e.g., directories of the American Library Association and the Special Library Association).
· Visit libraries (announced or unannounced) to assess the atmosphere and see the staff in action.
· Make use of telephone and e-mail (virtual) reference to see how well the staff members perform.
· Obtain samples of research packets brochures, and internal publications.
· Consult library Web pages.
In Step 4, assign responsibilities for gathering information and providing initial analysis. To be effective, your competitive intelligence effort should involve your entire staff, both professional and paraprofessional. If all staff members are involved in assessing the strengths and capabilities of other information entities, they will better appreciate the need for creating new products and services, and improving the way in which they perform everyday tasks.
The Real Work Begins
In Step 5, you organize and integrate the information you have gathered and share it with staff members and a select team of supporters from outside your library/information center. Once the information is collected, the real work begins.
Build a comprehensive profile of each competitor, using a structured format to allow for easy comparison. Distribute the profiles to your competitive intelligence team members and encourage them to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor and, if possible, to isolate the key factors that contribute to its success.
Extract the highlights from your individual competitor profiles and create a table to demonstrate where you stand vis-à-vis your competition. You can set these tables up any way you choose: products offered across all of your competition; markets/customers targeted; use of technology in product/service delivery; and so on.
Competitive intelligence is not simply an exercise; it is meant to stimulate action. Once you've looked at the competition, it's important to turn that microscope on your own company by initiating an information audit. This is Step 6.
· What makes your library special?
· What are its core business and market?
· How efficiently does it operate?
· How do you/could you differentiate your library from others?
· What should your customers perceive your library's capabilities to be?
· Do your customers use your entire range of products/services or just a few? Is this because they are not useful products or because your customers are not aware of their existence?
· Which of your "businesses" are at risk?
· Why are they at risk?
· Are your customers loyal? If your competition offered a similar service, would they try it? Could you lose them? How might you prevent this from happening?
Improving Existing Products While Developing New Capabilities
Step 7 is to gather your staff for regularly scheduled discussions concerning competitive intelligence. Set aside some time for each member to share observations about the competition. Consider not only what you have discovered about your competition but what, specifically, you intend to do as a result.
· What opportunities exist?
· What markets are underserved?
· What will you need to fill the gaps (skill sets, money, time, specialized databases)?
· Would teaming with one of your competitors yield a better product or service?
Now that you understand how your competitors operate, consider using the same strategies they use to deliver products and services to your target market. Some of your competitors will have skills similar to your organizations, so you must find a way to cast your abilities and those of your staff in a favorable light vis-à-vis the competition. This can be done by:
· Understanding what attracts customers to your competitors;
· Determining how you can acquire the essential characteristics for success; and
· Identifying the areas in which your organization is stronger than its competitors.
Using the results of the competitive intelligence process, consider not only which new products and services you can or should develop, but how you can improve your existing operations. This is Step 8. Which features can you add to existing ones to enhance the products/services you offer? How will you alter your marketing targets and approaches?
Some improvement projects will focus on operational design:
· How can coordination and responsiveness be improved?
· How can delays be eliminated?
· How can decisions be made faster?
Working in small teams, develop a strategy for each idea that has evolved during your competitive intelligence meetings, making certain that the objective of each is clear.
· Determine the actions that need to be taken to implement the project.
· Assign responsibilities/accountabilities for the changes.
· Consider additional funding requirements (and where you will get the funds you need).
· Create a schedule and milestones for completion.
· Set in place evaluation measures, so you can see how well your new services are doing.
Step 9 involves communication of the results of your staff's observations to management and users, including what you and your staff intend to do to improve operations, develop new products/services, or increase market share (number of users or targeted user communities). A formal report may be useful in some circumstances, but a few presentation slides that highlight where your organization stands vis-à-vis the competition may prove more effective.
Step 10 requires that you ensure a way of continuously monitoring the competition's actions. Understanding that competitive intelligence gathering is not a one-time effort, the process of acquiring and analyzing data about the competition does not end with a profile. Your competitors are constantly changing what they do and how they do it. Over time, there will be new entrants into the lucrative information market. Create a routine for reanalyzing competitors. When you spot a significant change or trend, it's time to put your heads together once again and consider what you will do to gain the competitive advantage.
Finally, consider the risks in not implementing a competitive intelligence program now. What will happen to your library/information center if you ignore the environment in which it operates, changes in information technology, and ways that customers can obtain the same resources your organization offers? The purpose of competitive intelligence is not merely to gather today's information on your competitors or to anticipate what they will do tomorrow. Use the intelligence you gather to transform your own organization, building in the flexibility you'll need to make fast changes, creating new products and services, establishing new alliances, altering the product mix, or changing the way in which your products/services are created/delivered. These efforts may not make you "the best," but they will ensure that you will continuously improve your operations, thereby furthering the aims of your customers, whoever they may be.
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