If you were thinking about competitive or business intelligence to seize business opportunities; Optimize, focus or plan for business development or problems; Gathering or analyzing strategic or tactical, innovative, or complex information or ideas; Industry monitoring or statistics; Benchmarking; or any advantage to make your business more successful ...

Great! You have

  come to the right place.

If you are making a significant investment in time or money,  do you have enough information to make it a success? 

Why is competitive or business intelligence (CI) one of the fastest growing fields in the world today? Few people talk, or even know, about it. Probably the most quoted is Robert Flynn, Chairman and CEO of NutraSweet. “Competitive Intelligence, in my opinion, is worth about $50 million a year to NutraSweet. That is a combination of revenues gained and those not lost…..Fifty is probably a low number” In other words, opportunities discovered and seized, and mistakes not made. Few indeed of the Fortune 500 companies are not using CI extensively today.

How do you do this?

Usually it is a lot of hard work, combined with some imagination and expertise.

Assume you have a box containing the jigsaw puzzles, a water scene, a landscape and an ‘old master’ painting, all mixed up. That is all you know about the contents. You are tasked with providing artist and title of the ‘old master’ painting. Initially jigsaw pieces with blue might be assumed to be the water scene, and leaves to be landscape. Pieces showing evidence of brushstrokes are probably part of the old master.

By concentrating on brushstrokes you can ignore the rest of the pieces, (information) and soon begin to assemble the picture. Long before it is complete, you can bring in an art expert who will be able to name the artist and painting. You get a copy from the library, add a few more pieces to verify the hypothesis, and you have your answer.

You do not even have any knowledge art to provide the correct answer. Nor was the trail of what you were following (brushstrokes) really connected with the subject of the picture. It was a unique filter to pass the information through to get your answer.

Often, the relationships between the data are more significant than the data itself.

For the results of a study on the effectiveness of CI, click here.

For a real world example of CI in action, click here. 

What is CI?

CI is the study of anything that will make your business more successful. It is the systematic collecting, selecting and analysis of data arranged to provide pertinent information so senior executives can make informed strategic and tactical decisions about their business and the competitive environment. We are information retrieval experts. For more specific information, please contact us.

Some Philosophy

When making decisions at the senior executive level, one is often faced with two apparently conflicting phenomena.

1. A lack of specific information to enable an appropriate strategic/tactical decision.

2. In today’s wired world, the masses of available data are simply overwhelming.

Normally the more appropriate the information, the better the decision. As CI professionals, our skill lies in knowing who, and how to ask an appropriate question.

This allows the executive to lever his time, and concentrate on the strategic/tactical decision itself, by moving past the “nice to know” data to the intelligence you must have to compete effectively.

Certainly all sorts of lists are readily available. If you feel they do not specifically address your problem, or, have the feeling you are of the mindset that may variously be described as “not knowing enough to ask an intelligent question”, please contact us in confidence.

Having a secure source of detailed, focused information can be very cost effective. Preferably the source should be local, with local knowledge. This is why most of our work focuses on North America, albeit often for clients in other countries.

In practical terms, what does this mean?

We are much like the scouts that an army sends out ahead of the main army. The scout is walking through the woods, and suddenly the horizon drops by 30 degrees. Could there be a cliff directly ahead? The scout suddenly becomes mighty careful in going ahead, and investigates carefully. What would be the consequences to an army marching straight ahead in these conditions? If there is a cliff, how can we go around, over, or through this particular obstacle?

Nor, are we specialists in all things about any particular field. No one can be. Using medical terms, we are not brain surgeons, we are more general practitioners, who have a good idea of how the brain works, and understand what some of the symptoms mean. Most importantly, we know what we do not know, but do know what makes a good brain surgeon, and how to find the best brain surgeon around, so they can be consulted to verify the symptoms present. We consult narrowly focused specialists a good deal in our work.

So what does Multiquest provide for their clients?

In practice there are almost no limits to what can be done, providing it is legal and ethical. On this site we have other more specific pages for specific areas, which we invite you to surf, but in general:

Corporate Competitive analysis.

• Who are the probable clients and their probable needs?

• Who are in allied fields, but not direct competitors, where some corporate cooperation (such as joint venture/strategic alliance) might be desirable?

• Insights as to how the market might next develop.

• Who are the present or potential competitors with insights as to possible strengths and weaknesses?

• What is the psychological profile, including history, strengths and weaknesses of a competitive CEO, or someone I may be negotiating with? How can I expect them to react to given stimuli? Example, click here.

Sales function Analysis and market research

• Is there a market niche, and how can I exploit it?

• How can I differentiate my product or service from the competition?

• What alternative sales/distribution methods available or advisable?

• Are there alternative markets to those which I have identified?

Barrier analysis: Regulatory, Cultural, Political, Physical, Financial, Demographic and Other.

• What could become a barrier, and possible avoidance tactics.  

If you have a problem you think might be solved by information, please contact us.

Studies have shown what should be common sense. Throughout history, he who has the better information, and uses that knowledge, has almost always won. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. There should be no surprises.  

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