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About Us > Help & Support > Tips for better practice

AWARE Help & Support
Tips & Ideas for Better Practice


AWARE aims to help organizations become the best in their sector. As part of our mission, we offer a number of tips and ideas that should help your competitive and marketing intelligence processes. Some will be directly relevant - while some are aimed to provoke thought and comment.

Our goal is to help you think outside the box - to be creative. It is only through being creative that you will be able to differentiate yourself from your competitors in the long-term - and thereby achieve long-term competitive advantage.

The tips and ideas on these pages are different from those we include on our Frequently asked questions on CI pages. Some are based on items published in AWARE's newsletter. They include business models, concepts and thoughts that you can use when looking at your own organization and processes.

Let us have feedback on what you like, what worked, what didn't (and why). Also, let us know if you have any tips that you'd like us to publish on these pages. We'll include full attribution, and contact details for any tips or ideas published.

This month's Tips

What is a competitor?

This tip looks at a number of definitions of "competitor" and how choosing the wrong definition can impact approaches to competitive strategy and understanding. (More)

Avoid Price Wars

This tip examines the impact of a price war on company profitability, and suggests a few ways to avoid such battles. (More)

Stengths, Benefits & Features

Understanding the difference is essential for effective marketing strategies. This tip defines strengths, benefits and features and gives an example of the differences (More)

Information Categories

There are 4 types of information available to companies:

  • what we know we know;
  • what we know we don't know;
  • what we don't know we know;
  • what we don't know we don't know.

This tip examines each of these categories, and their implications for CI! (More)

Evaluating Risk

What is your viewpoint? Are you one of those who avoids risk-taking and prefers safety, or do you relish new opportunities? This tip looks at why in today's world, risk-taking in business has become a necessity for survival. (More)

Quick Tip: Questions

Quick Tip: Ask the right question

Rather than look for information to answer a question, think about how you will use the answer.

If you won't be able to incorporate actions based on the answer you find into your business strategy then maybe the question you asked needs changing to something that will lead to meaningful actions.

 

Books - Competitors (Fahey)

Recommended Book

Competitive-Intelligence-in-the-UK
Competitive Intelligence: Gathering, Analysing and Putting it to Work
Christopher Murphy
Buy UK £ or US$

Read our review of this book

If you are interested in learning about competitive intelligence with a UK / European focus then this book is for you. Most books on CI are written by US authors and take a US perspective. They fail to note the significant differences between what is available in the US and Europe and the UK. For example, in the US the US Freedom of Information Act is key for finding a lot of information. Such legislation has only recently been enacted in the UK and the type of information available is more limited. In contrast, financial information is much easier to obtain in the UK than the US. Murphy's book redresses the balance and fills a gap in guiding the CI newcomer on how to gather CI in Europe.

One of the best sections is a detailed examination of the sources and types of financial CI information that can be obtained within the UK. In fact I think this is unique. Of all the CI books I've read - none give anything like the same depth on this crucial topic.

For a thorough review of this book check out FreePint's book review.

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For more recommendations visit our book selection.

 

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Finding Competitive Intelligence using Online Sources

AWARE consultants are experts at discovering competitor information online and have developed a market-leading course on Finding Competitive Intelligence using Online Sources. This course has been given as an in-house course to numerous companies across industries (IT, publishing, telecoms, chemicals....) and countries, as well as publicly at SCIP annual and European conferences, the London International Online Information Conferences and other similar events.

The workshop has received high praise for its unique approach to finding competitive intelligence on the Internet. The workshop - available as a half-day summary, full day or 2-day in-depth training course with extensive practical online sessions - teaches attendees how to find actionable competitive intelligence rather than just present a list of sources that quickly date. Like all AWARE's in-house training, the course can be customised to focus on industry or competitive area.

For more information on this workshop and how it can help you become a more effective Internet researcher check out our Competitive Intelligence Training and ask us about our courses on finding CI information.

 

AWARE's Newsletter

Subscribe to AWARE's newsletter giving news on AWARE, and advice and tips on competitive intelligence and marketing topics.

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Our services in competitive intelligence research, competitor analysis and CI training will help you integrate and use competitive and marketing intelligence in your business, strategic and marketing planning processes. Whether you need research, advice or training, our mission is to support our clients so that they achieve their growth objectives.

For the best UK & European competitive intelligence and competitor analysis services, contact us today.

AWARE Phone numbers: 0845 430 9125 (International: +44 20 8954 9121). Fax: 0845 430 9126 (International: +44 20 8954 2102)

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Last page / site update: Sunday, February 19, 2012

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