The document discusses the importance of conducting a competitive intelligence needs assessment to identify an organization's key intelligence topics (KITs) and key intelligence questions (KIQs). It states that asking the right questions is critical for competitive intelligence to provide actionable insights that help the organization achieve its goals. The needs assessment process should involve both decision-makers and competitive intelligence professionals collaborating to identify the KITs and KIQs. This ensures the intelligence needs cover opportunities, threats, strategies and competitors in a comprehensive yet prioritized manner. Identifying the right intelligence needs upfront allows an organization to maximize return on investment from its competitive intelligence activities.

1. Competitive Intelligence
Needs-Assessment:
Asking the right questions
ValueNotes White Paper
May 2012

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Competitorprofiling:Manyneedsbehindtheneed
White paper | May 2012 | Competitive Intelligence Needs Assessment: Asking the right questions
Competitive Intelligence (CI) plays a critical role in formulating an
organisation’s business strategy. It can make the difference between
winning and losing, survival and death. However, CI can only live up to this
expectation, if it addresses the right questions. Right answers to wrong
questions, will be wrong for the organization. What questions should the
organization ask in order to win? The answer to this requires clear logical
thinking on the part of both, the decision-makers who will use the
intelligence to further their business objectives, and competitive
intelligence analysts who will provide actionable inputs to facilitate the
decisions. Going about CI needs assessment in a systematic fashion helps
you hit the bull’s-eye.
Executive Summary
• Competitive intelligence is a critical input for decision making in a global, competitive and
rapidly changing business environment in which companies operate today.
• Asking the right questions about the external business environment is the first step
towards getting actionable competitive intelligence.
• Determining the right questions is not trivial, as each individual’s perspective on the
competitive environment is governed their role, past experience, level of knowledge,
personal biases, predisposition, and so on.
• Organizations need to undertake a systematic exercise to identify the key intelligence they
need in order to ensure that
o they are able to achieve their strategic goals
o they are able to take advantage of emerging opportunities, and mitigate risks and
threats
o they are not taken by “surprise” by developments in their external environment
o They are able to gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the industry vis-à-vis
their competitors
• Defining the key intelligence needs of an organization is best done collaboratively by the
key decision-makers and competitive intelligence professionals
• A careful needs assessment enables an organization to
o maximize the ROI on its CI
o meet its business objectives

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White paper | May 2012 | Competitive Intelligence Needs Assessment: Asking the right questions
Contents
1. Are decision makers asking their competitive intelligence teams the right questions?..................4
2. What questions should the decision-makers ask?................................................................................4
3. What questions should the CI team ask? ...............................................................................................6
4. How must organisations go about identifying their KITs and KIQs?..................................................6
5. Benefits of Needs Assessment for CI......................................................................................................7
6. Final thoughts….........................................................................................................................................7

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White paper | May 2012 | Competitive Intelligence Needs Assessment: Asking the right questions
1. Are decision makers asking their competitive intelligence teams the
right questions?
“Asking the right questions takes as much skill as giving the right answers”
If you have played the game of 20 questions
1
, you will appreciate the fact that
if you don’t think through your questions intelligently, you “waste” your
questions.
In the context of a business, you need competitive intelligence (CI) to make
good decisions that will give your company a competitive advantage, but you
have a limited budget for getting this CI. As in the case of the game of 20
questions, if you don’t ask the right questions, you waste your budget on
irrelevant research.
Competitive Intelligence is a critical input for decision making in a global,
competitive and rapidly changing business environment in which companies operate today. It can
potentially be a game-changer for an organisation.
However, since many factors contribute to the success or failure of a business, it is not easy or even
necessary to isolate the contribution of CI in the performance. While companies do try to measure the
performance of their CI teams, measuring the value of CI inputs to an organisation is a challenge. In
general, if the value of CI is greater than its cost, it is a worthwhile investment. CI teams need to
optimize their effort by answering the right questions.
Framing the right questions is not as trivial as it seems. If members of senior management in any
organisation were to frame CI questions, each is likely come up with different sets. In-depth probing and
discussions on how the intelligence will help these decision-makers is required for achieving
convergence on what questions the CI team needs to address.
CI, in a nutshell, is the art of asking the right questions to the right sources in the right way at
the right time. – SCIP.org
2. What questions should the decision-makers ask?
The competitive intelligence needs of key decision-makes can be broken into three categories. In CI
jargon, there are three types of “key intelligence topics” (KITs).
1
For those who haven’t, here it is in a nutshell: “In the traditional game, one player is chosen to be the
answerer. That person chooses a subject but does not reveal this to the others. All other players are
questioners. They each take turns asking a question which can be answered with a simple “Yes” or “No” –
only 20 questions in all. If a questioner guesses the correct answer, that questioner wins and becomes the
answerer for the next round.

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White paper | May 2012 | Competitive Intelligence Needs Assessment: Asking the right questions
Early warning KITs
Organisations are continuously
adjusting their strategies and actions to
developments in the external
environment. If they can get early
indications of how the environment is
likely to change in the future, they are
better able to prepare for it.
Companies keep a close watch on their
environment to identify opportunities for
their businesses, as well as to spot
threats that might jeopardize their plans
or performance. If a company can
identify emerging opportunities before
their competitors, they can gain a
competitive advantage over their peers
by being the first-movers in the market.
Similarly, early warnings on impending risks or threats enable businesses to mitigate them before they
cause any significant damage to the organisation.
In the age of globalization, the external environment of organisations is vast and rapidly changing. It is
neither feasible, nor cost efficient, to keep a watch on all aspects of the environment. Organisations
need to identify the key areas that have maximum impact on their businesses. For example, tracking
technology developments will be critical to a company that manufactures products that have fast
technological obsolescence. Similarly, a consumer durables company is interested in identifying pockets
of concentration of disposable income, for selling its products.
Strategy KITs
These intelligence topics
address the business objectives
as stated by an organisation.
Goals of various units or
functions within the organisation
feed into the organisation’s
business objectives. For
example, if a company wants to
grow by expanding its
geographic footprint, it needs to
identify which new geographies
to enter and how.
Competitive intelligence inputs are required for deciding strategies to meet the goals. Strategic KITs
address specific objectives of an organisation, and differ from early warning KITs in that they typically do
not require continuous monitoring. They are generally addressed as a one-time activity. Of course, it is
possible to revisit them periodically if and when required.
Early
Warning
CI
Government
regulations
Customers
and markets
Technology/
innovations
Suppliers and
raw materials
Macro
indicators
Competitors
Industry
structure and
trends
Opport‐
unities
Threats
Competitive
Intelligence
Optimal Strategy
Goals / Plans
Business Objective

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White paper | May 2012 | Competitive Intelligence Needs Assessment: Asking the right questions
Competitor KITs
Organisations need to gain and maintain a competitive advantage
over their competitors in order to survive and grow. They must watch
what competition is doing at all times, if they want to anticipate their
strategies, and counter or nullify them.
Once again, it may not be necessary to keep an eye on all aspects of
the competitors’ businesses all the time. For example, they may look
at the financials every quarter, but may want to track new product
announcements on a continuous basis. They can choose the
parameters to monitor based on their own strengths and
vulnerabilities vis-à-vis their competitors.
3. What questions should the CI team ask?
Should the CI team address all the KITs identified by the decision-makers? Organisations need to take a
call on whether a particular KIT is worth pursuing, based on a cost benefit analysis. As long as the
benefit of the intelligence is greater than its cost, it is worthwhile for the company to address the KIT.
However, even within this set of economically viable KITs, organisations often need to prioritize the KITs
that can potentially benefit the organisation the most.
KITs are the broad problems/ areas that decision-makers need solutions for. For example, they may
identify “How can I minimize my cost of manufacturing?” as a key intelligence topic. “Should we
manufacture the product ourselves or outsource the manufacturing?” is the decision that the company
will need to take.
In order to answer this question, competitive intelligence analysts may need to ask several micro
questions such as “What is the cost of manufacturing if we do it ourselves?”, “How long will it take us to
build our own manufacturing capability?”, “Who provides outsourced manufacturing services?”, “ How
much do they cost?”, “Do my competitors outsource?” and so on. These are the key intelligence
questions (KIQs) that the CI team needs to answer.
While the KITs are generally spelled out by the decision-makers, the KIQs are developed by the CI team
(though decision-makers may also give their inputs on these).
4. How must organisations go about identifying their KITs and KIQs?
Employees at all levels in an organisation, from junior employees to the management, have limited
perspectives that are dictated by their role, past experience, level of knowledge, personal biases,
predisposition, and so on. It is hard for any one person to draft a comprehensive list of key intelligence
topics and questions for a company.
A collaborative effort will always yield a superior outcome as all blind spots of individual participants will
get coverage when multiple people put their heads together.
The process for CI needs assessment is the first input into the organisation’s CI framework and is
outlined in the exhibit below.

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White paper | May 2012 | Competitive Intelligence Needs Assessment: Asking the right questions
Exhibit 2: CI framework
A CI framework is comprised of key intelligence questions, the analysis required for answering them, the
data points required for the analysis and the sources that can be used for each data point.
A CI framework applied to the “right” questions enables organisations to ensure that the competitive
intelligence delivered to the decision-makers is:
a) Relevant
b) Adequate (important intelligence is not missed)
c) Created efficiently (high ROI)
d) Effective (actionable and leads to superior business performance)
Many organisations prefer to involve external consultants for guiding and moderating the needs
assessment process for several reasons:
• They have expertise in CI processes and needs assessment methodologies and frameworks
• They offer a fresh third-party perspective to the deliberations, which often help in throwing up
new ideas and hence superior outcomes
• They lend objectivity to the proceedings and rise above internal organisational dynamics
• They are able to enforce rigour in the process at all levels in the organisation as they are not
bound by internal hierarchies
5. Benefits of Needs Assessment for CI
Key decision-makers get actionable intelligence that is relevant to the decisions they need to make
and areas they need to monitor
Company can eliminate any redundant data collection and reporting, thus increasing the return on
investment in CI
CI addresses all the key risks faced by the company, thus reducing the chances of it being “caught”
by surprise
Needs assessment is the first input in the CI framework for the organisation
6. Final thoughts
A systematic approach to assessing CI needs, and hence a plan for CI activities in an organisation, is
essential for the success of the CI team as well as the business itself. It is therefore in the interest of the
organisation to ensure that a high level of rigour is applied in this activity.
Identificaltion
of KITs by
individuals
Collaborative
refining of
KITs
Prioritising
KITs
From
KITs to
KIQs
Execution on
KIQs

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White paper | May 2012 | Competitive Intelligence Needs Assessment: Asking the right questions
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