Competitive intelligence essentially means understanding andlearning what’s happening in the world outside your business so youcan be as competitive as possible. It means learning as much aspossible–as soon as possible–about your industry in general, yourcompetitors, or even your county’s particular zoning rules. Inshort, it empowers you to anticipate and face challenges headon.
One of best websites for gathering competitive intelligence isHoover’sOnline, which, for a fee, provides in-depth profiles of morethan 18,000 public and private companies. However, there is alsofree content available. You can research competitors, track stockmarket performance, and keep tabs on IPOs.
Other good sites include:
Dun &Bradstreet, which provides information on companies relevant toyour business through a searchable database of companies in theUnited States and around the world for a fee.
Dialog,which has a pay-as-you-go option, called DialogSelect, that allowsyou to search through 50,000 objective and respected publicationsand documents online and pay for each article or report on acase-by-case basis.
Fuld & Co.’s internet Intelligence Index, whichallows users to gather information from a wide variety of publicservices for free. It contains links to more than 600intelligence-related internet sites, covering everything frommacroeconomic data to individual patent and stock quoteinformation.
KnowX.comreports on bankruptcies, liens, judgments and such againstindividuals and businesses. Some reports are free; others require afee.
Reuter’sMultex Investor site, which offers access to research reportsproduced by financial research firms. Some reports are free, butmost require a fee.
ThomasRegister, which provides listings of thousands of companies ina variety of industries for free.
Yahoo!Finance, which has everything from up-to-the-minute marketsummaries to stock research to financial news, and much of it’sfree.
Usenet groups for a particular industry can also be a greatsource of information. To find these groups, check out http://groups.google.com.
Also, don’t forget to regularly check the national newswires andthe press release newswires–PRNewswire.com and Businesswire.com.Also, regularly check the sites of your local chamber of commerce,Better Business Bureau, federal and state government, tradeassociation, and trade magazines and newspapers.
Finally, make sure to consistently check the websites of yourmajor competitors, suppliers and clients.
