Gartner Discovers Competitive Intelligence (Part II of Gartner Discovers America)

In a recent report on the state of CI in Tech companies (see Part 1 posted yesterday), Gartner, a data company, concluded that “it is a struggle getting technology vendor executives to respond to competitive intelligence.”

In asking “why”, Gartner suggests, correctly, that Tech CEOs are “constantly surrounded by a variety of internal stakeholders seeking to make their voices heard.” It names Business Development, Sales, Corporate Development, Market Insights (I can only assume it means market research/customer insights) and Finance as the functions vying for executive attention. Among all the noise about the external environment, CI gets lost.

This topic is of the utmost importance to all of us in CI- both practitioners and teachers. The explanation is only partially satisfying since one may claim, correctly, that if we had something incredibly insightful to tell CEOs, they would listen.

Let’s be honest: We don’t. If Gartner, whose access is mostly to IT executives, complains about it, maybe it’s time to put this delusion to rest.

So here is a strong statement, backed by 30 years in the field, thousands of graduates of my Academy, and dozens upon dozens of presentations to executives:

CI will never be a priority for CEOs. Anyone who thinks we should target CEOs has little real-world experience or entertains delusion of grandeur (I know a few like that). Alas, delusion is not reality, and we are supposed, after all, to be the providers of reality-check. Get over yourself. Going after the wrong audience ends up bankrupting organizations and getting practitioners laid off.

?At the beginning of the discipline’s history, both Jan Herring and I pushed hard for access (even direct report) to the CEO. For a while, it worked (Motorola, Kellogg). Then as time went by, the function and process were pushed down to business units, then to the product level. The reason is that CEOs do not deal with the day-to-day battle between your company and its competitors. It is also a simple fact that obsession with competitors’ every little move is not typical at the very top and it’s not healthy.

Does it mean we can’t provide strategic insights based on a deep understanding of the competitive dynamics (not competitor minutia) in the market? Not at all. It does mean we need an intermediate between us and top management (which I call the Briefer). If the Briefer is in marketing or strategy or the secretarial pool doesn’t matter as long as they have the CEO’s (or BU President's) ear on the one hand and a temperament suitable for competitive insights (provided by the CI analyst) on the other.

?Gartner has several recommendations for Tech CEOs that deserve attention.

1.?????Gartner recommends sharing CI insights with the board together with recommended actions.

2.?????Gartner recommends scheduling at least quarterly meetings with key stakeholders “to track progress and determine any next courses of action.”

Now this will be?a serious improvement over the current “send the facts on the water and see if they float.”

What Gartner gets wrong?

Two other recommendations by Gartner are wrong.

1.?????Gartner claims Tech CEOs must move fast when they “have data that can be used.” This is ambiguous at best. Competitive insights are not “data”, but perspectives and often educated speculations, and they hardly ever require a knee-jerk response. A quick response may be suitable for salespeople in a tactical maneuver about a given – here now tomorrow gone- deal, but not a strategic proactive move at the board/CEO level. ?

2.?????Gartner suggests that Tech CEOs must involve everyone in the company in gathering data and adding it to a central repository. This is a déjà vu. In 1988, Tamar Salwen-Gilad and I published the first book ever on organizing CI activities (The Business Intelligence System) and recommended involving everyone (we called it ICN- Internal Collection Network.) Here is a lesson for Gartner: It doesn’t work.

Alternative perspective

If Gartner wants to know why it is useless nowadays to try and involve everyone in the collection of intelligence (especially salespeople), it needs to contact me. As Gartner says in its opening slide, “Gartner delivers actionable, objective insight, guidance, and tools to enable stronger performance on your organization’s most critical priorities.” I offer to do the same for Gartner, for free. Mr. Hall, the ball is in your court. Or quadrant.

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