About the A9

The A9 Network is a group of CI and business

research companies that co-operate across time

zones and geographical business areas in order

to increase customer value.

We have especially strong resources in

Scandinavia/Nordics

A9 Consulting

Defining

What do people mean when they say

• Business Intelligence?

• Competitive Intelligence?

• Market Intelligence?

• Data Warehousing, Data Mining?

• Customer Information?

• Primary Research?

Competitive

Intelligence

System

Prediction and CI – what does it cover?

A9 Case Example

• Corporate and financial investigation

• Due Diligence – M&A

Interviews and research focusing on key business people

– career and behaviour issues

• Civil Litigation

• Criminal Litigation

• Bankruptcy Filing

• Liens and Judgments

Case information is/is not publicly available in the different

countries

A9 Case

The Stein Bagger Case • Stein Bagger is a Danish criminal, businessman, entrepreneur and

former CEO of the bankrupt company IT Factory. Before bankruptcy and

a subsequent fraud scandal, he was named "Danish Entrepreneur of the

Year" by Ernst & Young, and his company was named "Denmark's best

IT company" two years in a row by the magazine Computerworld. On the

11 June, 2009, Stein Bagger was sentenced to a seven-year prison

sentence.

Because Investigations revealed that Bagger employed a duping scheme

by forging large sales orders creating fictional revenue.

Stein Bagger claimed that he had several academic degrees, including an

MBA and a PhD in International Business from "San Francisco Technical

University". No such university exists. After reporters inquired about the

alleged degrees, Bagger hired an American actress to impersonate an

official of the fake university, to "verify" his degrees.

Predicting

Essentials of the prediction research

• Providing management with information they can act on

• Anticipating what will happen

• Strategic and tactical

• Align with corporate goals

• Becoming more knowledgeable

• Predictive, actionable information

• Analyzing and interpreting findings

• Pattern matching

• Communicating results

Predicting Issues

1. Customers – They have the power to bargain for lower

prices and force certain kinds of change within your

industry.

2. Suppliers – Suppliers may have certain power to

dictate prices and options upon a company.

3. Substitutions – Your market share is subject to change

from substitute products or a new use of an existing

product.

4. New Competition – New entrants into the marketplace

are not uncommon in this global world and they can be

difficult to identify.

5. Existing Competition – Your organization is currently

competing for market share, trying to position itself as a

leader.

Time is Critical

Slowness is the enemy of competitive intelligence.

Having knowledge about something three weeks after you

need to act is of little value.

Two critical questions you must address are:

Where do we go to get the information and how long will it

take?

This requires a very deliberate and strong competitive

intelligence effort. Without a serious commitment to

competitive intelligence, time will erase whatever hope you

have for effective decision-making.

Analysis

• The heart of Competitive Intelligence is Interpreting data

• It’s not enough to collect and assemble

• It’s not even sufficient to synthesize

• We should be answering the questions,

“Why does this matter?” and

“What should we do next?”

Analysis Tools

Tool Use

Porters Five Forces To map the competitive markets strength

and weaknesses

User Investigation To find out the goals and actions of specific

target groups

SWOT analysis To identify threats and opportunities and

how the organasation can deal with them

Benchmark To compare with and learn from other

organisations

Scenario Analysis To undertake long-term planning

War Gaming To prepare for strategic competitive action

plans

Early Warning

Systems

To monitor continuously to discover

opportunities and threats at an early

stage

Scenario Analysis

For environments that involve rapid change and high levels

of uncertainty, competitive intelligence may have to

construct different scenarios based on what might happen.

• Scenario analysis is usually taking place over several

months in distinct stages:

• Stage 1 – Identify key drivers within your organization.

This will require brainstorming with key management personnel.

• Stage 2 – Study the competitive universe to isolate possible

scenarios.

This may result in a real need to develop competitive intelligence

for filling in certain unknowns.

• Stage 3 – Create three to five different scenarios and try to assign

a probability on the likelihood that the scenario will happen.

• Stage 4 – Conduct a series of strategic meetings to build a set of

strategies for addressing different scenarios.

• Stage 5 – Establish and monitor a set of indicators for each

scenario. You will need to assign responsibilities to different

people for researching and analyzing these indicators.

• When a threat or opportunity becomes real, take appropriate

action.

Early Warning – Future Scenarios

• Situation in 2015

• International clients demand: – Business research/analysis with global coverage

• Local presence needed

– Aggregation of information

• One project may cover 5 countries rather than 5 projects each focusing on a separate market.

– Cost reductions based on larger projects & shared project methodology

– Rapid project execution

• The question: How to handle these demands?

Early warning – future scenarios

Background/trends

• Extreme market growth in new markets

• More global business operations, joint-ventures, M&As

• More international projects

• Increasing international competition

• Greater need for understanding the global business

• The Competitive Intelligence activity - focusing on

future uncertainties that may lead to profound changes

in the business environment

• Improved understanding of possible competitor (and

other stakeholder) moves.

• A number of threats and opportunities will be identified

throughout the process.

INDUSTRY

SPECIFIC

INFORMATION

MULTI-

COUNTRY

PERSPECTIVE

Country

Intelligence

Northern

Europe

benchmark

Aggregation

and

distribution

Publishing

Analysis & Decision Making

Company analysts

Company Decision Makers

Local business

press

Industry

journals

Authorities

Research firms

Market

Intelligence

Local

language

Business

information

databases

publishers and

database

distributors

(”aggregators”)

.

- Gale

- Dialog

- Factiva

- LexisNexis

Investment

analysts

Stock exchanges

Institutions

Companies

Organizations

Non-published

information

A9 Early Warning Analysis: Northern Europe

Macro

indicators

GDP Growth

Investments

ITC-Level

Regulation

etc

A9 Northern

Europe Market

Watch

-

Interviews

Exhibitions

Observation

Country

indicators

Macro +

Industry

structure

Industry

growth

Entry modes

etc

Market

analysis

Competitors

Suppliers

Customers

Segments

Products

Persons

etc

A9 Early Opportunity Analysis

-

Issues for Global CI in general

1. Global scope / project capabilities

2. Strategic mindset

3. Cultural sensitivity

4. Local presence

a) Language

b) Connections and local understanding

5. Curiousity

6. Reliability

A9 Case Examples

A9 Case 1:

Global Research Support

• Intelligence Need: A company had developed a software product with global application for a specific segment of pre-university students, which it intended to commercialize in a select group of countries worldwide.

• The issue of product pricing and local market potential was important to understand prior to launch. Developing a proper launch strategy was important.

• A price list needed to be developed that would support a competitive posture, while optimizing potential revenues.

• A9 Solution: Expert interviewers were used in gathering detailed information on the leading software products in each 14 countries with required linguistic abilities and local business understanding. The vast amount of data was compiled and analysed, revealing not only differential patterns in local market pricing, but also which products were the market leaders.

• Based on the information, competitive positioning analysis was carried out as well as basic scenario analysis

• Product development plans as well as market entry and marketing plans were created based on the intelligence at hand.

A9 Case 2:

Telecom in the Nordics

• Intelligence Need: A company needed to understand the Nordic telecom markets regarding certain segments and certain countries.

• The need was, among other things, to create country based industry profiles to determine which countries were most interesting to enter.

• It was also a need to establish some kind of monitoring system / Early Warning System to decide what markets that were developing most favourable in comparison to the others.

• A9 Solution:

• An A9 expertise overview of the Nordic countries related telecoms experience was created.

• Country profiles and industry analysis projects were conducted.

• A model for the development of an early warning/early opportunity system was created.

• Review of the Telecommunication market on a quarterly basis and preparation a competition mapping in electronic format for the purposes of strategic investment of a foreign Telco in the Nordic Telecommunication Market.

Patents

• Patent information/intelligence can and should be

used strategically to provide an optimum competitive

position

• Patent strategy must include (but is not limited to)

monitoring and mapping of the patent activities of

competitors, especially when these are encroaching

on one’s own area of expertise

• Patent strategy must always be seen in connection

with the R&D strategy and the overall business

strategy

Investigate competitive activity Patents— interconnected with business and R&D trategies

• Constant awareness of new R&D developments,

• Purpose: Obtain best possible protection of own R&D inventions,

BUT

• Monitoring potential new competing companies and products

Business strategy

R&D strategy Patent strategy

Global Projects – Lessons Learned

1. Local resources often needed 1. Language skills

2. Understanding the business climate

3. Relationships matter

4. Personal meetings often needed

2. Know who - intelligence: 1. Quality, research approach and ethical

standards varies tremendously

3. International project management 1. Clear project purposes and information collection methods approach

2. Costs might vary ( 3000 USD vs 20000 USD)for the same research

3. Negotiation skills needed & cultural sensitivity

4. Established network needed 1. Saves money for your company/ the clients and saves time, efforts and

resources for yourself.

Final Thought

“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t

know where you’re going, because you

might not get there.”

Attributed to Yogi Berra