FREE ESSAY ON THE IT PROFESSIONAL'S ROLE IN COMPETITIVE MARKET INTELLIGENCE

THE IT PROFESSIONAL'S ROLE IN COMPETITIVE MARKET INTELLIGENCE

Abstract
The successful company will be driven to increase stakeholder value and profitability
while creating a working environment that encourages and nurtures the growth of personal
creativity and development as well as nurturing a sense of well-being for all members of
the organization. 
When dealing with the forces that drive industry competition, a company can devise a
strategy that takes the offensive. This posture is designed to do more than merely cope
with the forces themselves; it is meant to alter their causes.
The IT professional's role in competitive market intelligence
The IT professional is increasingly being called upon to be a sleuth in the quest for the
competitive market intelligence that is so necessary to support the enterprise's overall
business strategy. In today's fast-changing marketplace, it is essential to monitor the
techniques of similar businesses, and IT is being called upon to fulfill that functional
need. 
IT must provide marketing with answers to vital questions such as: 
1. How are competitors getting business? 
2. Where does the enterprise look for new customers? 
3. How are prospects targeted? 
4. What services, products, and prices do competitors offer? 
5. What images do our competitors project, and how does that compare to our image? 
The combined strength of marketing and IT
Enterprises have depended on marketing for too long to provide competitive intelligence.
It is crucial for IT professionals to contribute their specialized expertise to
successfully adapt to the changing dynamics of the market arena. Marketing cannot do the
job without the cooperation, tools, and willing support of the IT department. With the
combined strength of the two complementary functions, a winning competitive market
intelligence program is within the enterprise's reach. 
Useful and sometimes surprising insights can be gained from exploring the terrain of
actual and potential competitors. Hardly an academic exercise, sizing up the competition
should become an ongoing, regular, and systematic process of gathering, analyzing, and
acting upon relevant data, which will provide businesses with two tangible benefits: 
-  It will reveal the steps that management must take to preempt competitive strikes. 
-  It will signal new market opportunities. 
Competitive monitoring enables management to develop practical strategies and measure the
success of their actions. 
What you should know
Simply knowing who your competitors are is not enough; you should also ferret out what
their strategies and objectives are. You can gauge their strengths and weaknesses by
learning about their products and services (current and new), pricing, features, and the
level of customer satisfaction. How are your products or services positioned relative to
the competition? Do your customers and prospects see your service as having the highest
quality and still selling at the lower price? Is your product viewed as the low-cost
brand, the premium-priced brand, the old standby, or the leader? 
After getting some comments, it may still be neither possible nor desirable to change
your service's features. Instead, research could point out what to communicate and how to
communicate to your market. For example, you could tell your marketing department what
potential customers are looking for and highlight the features that are valued by your
customers. Your information will enable the marketing people to create materials that
tell customers what they want to hear and sell them what they want to buy. Differences
can be subtle but they really do matter. 
Are yesterday's customers and clients being lured away by today's competition? Are they
being tempted by the competition's siren song? Are they saying yes to your rival's lower
fees or discounts? Are they buying new products or services that your company has not
even thought of offering? Who will provide the answers? IT can, at the very least,
provide meaningful data to formulate the correct solutions. 
Potential market threats 
While management understands the importance of keeping an eye on the competition, some
members of management mistakenly believe that the marketing department alone has the
resources to do a proper job. This is simply not true. Much valuable information exists
in the database mines of the IT function. The IT professional must do some of the digging
in those mines to find it. Most IT professionals are already in an excellent position to
obtain and use primary competitive information and need only the encouragement or
permission of management. 
Frequently, IT has become the central repository for this kind of competitive analysis
information. However, using the information can be a challenge when different departments
within the company engage in territorial squabbles, and the company is forced to dilute
valuable resources through unnecessary duplications of effort. In such situations,
management must educate all departments to funnel customer and prospect data back to a
central IT point.
Emphasize your strengths 
The benefits of a competitive intelligence effort coordinated by the IT department are:
1. Learning the enterprise's strengths and weaknesses. 
2. Learning whom is and who is not buying. 
3. Determining customers' and prospects' buying plans. 
4. Anticipating rather than reacting to the market. 
5. Taking the competition seriously. They are not going to vanish. 
Equally important, but occasionally overlooked, is that competitive research, if done
well, can give your company a refreshing appreciation of the role of the IT function and
a better understanding of your company's own competitive strengths. You may discover, for
instance, that your firm's style or delivery is more appreciated or valued by customers
than management may have realized. Knowing this facilitates your exploitation of those
strengths. 
Conclusion
In conclusion, the awareness of these forces can help a company stake out a position in
its industry that is less vulnerable to attack. Many factors determine the nature of
competition, including not only rivals, but also the economics of particular industries,
new entrants, the bargaining power of customers and suppliers, and the threat of
substitute services or products. A strategic plan of action based on this might include:
positioning the company so that its capabilities provide the best defense against the
competitive forces; influencing the balance of forces through strategic moves; and
anticipating shifts in the factors underlying competitive forces. 
Increasingly, corporations are recognizing the strategic role of the operations function.
These organizations are discovering that a focus on customer needs is effective only if
the operations function is designed and managed to meet those needs. From acquiring raw
materials to fabricating parts, to assembling products, to customer delivery, a total
systems perspective can enable them, in the ideal, to fashion an operations function like
the inner workings of a finely tuned machine. Today that operation can be fine-tuned by
using modern information systems. 
References
Fox, J. (1984). The IT Professional's Role in Competitive Market Intelligence
TechRepublic http://www.techrepublic.com/article.jhtml?id=r00619991216fox01.htm
Bibliography
Fox, J. (1984). The IT Professional's Role in Competitive Market Intelligence
TechRepublic http://www.techrepublic.com/article.jhtml?id=r00619991216fox01.htm