SCIP Oregon

CI links from April Chapter Meeting

Posted by campsean - 25/04/09 at 08:04:20 pm

During the April meeting we pulled together a variety of sites and resources to use when gathering competitive intelligence.

Here is the full list.

People Searches:

Emailpattern.com – Look up the pattern that a company uses to assign email addresses.  If you know someone’s name, this helps you guess their email.

Pipl.com – look people up by name, email, Web nickname, or phone number.  Find out their other contact information and what social networks they’re a part of.

Linkedin.com – Find people for interview recruitment, determine where your employees have gone off to, use saved searches to receive alerts when new people go to work for competitors.

Search Engines

LexisNexis and Factiva are struggeling to index relevant content because they focus on publishing content, which is waning.  But, Factiva is only $70 per year, and there’s no additional charge for searching.  There is a $2 charge per article to view.  People report finding document titles on Factiva and then looking for those exact title with Google to save money.

Clusty is a meta-search engine that groups results into logically related clusters. 

Touchgraph visually shows how sites on the Web are related to other sites.

Archive.org – (a.k.a. “The Internet Wayback Machine”) keeps historical copies of Web pages, letting you see what products or services a competitor used to offer, or how their positioning has changed.

Books.google.com, scholar.google.com – Find people who have authored or been interviewed on various topics.  Useful to find candidates for qualitative research or subject matter background.   

Search for PDF or PPT file types under a company’s site to get more in-depth information.  Use wildcards to pick up subsidiaries which are more likely to leak information.  For example:

                positioning messaging filetype:pdf site:*.somecompany.*/*

www.google.com/alerts – monitor competitors and detect recent news.  Often lags breaking news by 24 hours.

bizjournals.com – backend site to all the business journals.  Small companies might make lot of news locally, but not show up in Google.

Silobreaker.com – Company information, leadership, connections to other people, news, etc.

Company Info

Finance.yahoo.com – company filings and other statistics, and investor message boards.

Hoovers.com – Company statistics, leadership, jobs, news, competitors, and other background information. 

Indeed.com – Search for company job postings across many jobs sites.

Glassdoor.com – Get information, for a company’s employees, about the company moral, culture, strengths and weaknesses, and salaries.

Seekingalpha.com – Has financial information and earnings call transcripts.

Delphion.com – patent search database

Innography.com – A startup with pricing better than Delphion.  Lets you search inventors, companies, etc. 

footnoted .org – Digs into the footnotes of financial filings

Allconferences.com – lets you know what conferences a competitor will attend as a sponsor or exhibitor.

Other

Web Site Monitoring Tools – A list of Web based and downloadable tools for monitoring Web sites for changes. 

Edgar-online.com – Company information, financial filings, and other company information

Twitter – Many competitor employees twitter important news, customer meetings, and other information that won’t show up in formal writings.  Said one CI professional, “I’ve been profoundly struck by the things I’ve discovered.” 

Tweetdeck, Digsby – let you view and manage your twitter streams.  Digsby also integrates with Linked-In.

Slideshare.net – Companies often post product or service pitch decks here.

Fedspending.org – Information about the business a competitor has done with the federal government.

http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm – makes “publish or perish” software that uses Google Scholar data to determine citation information.

Thefoundationcenter.org  – grant writing research

Quantcast.com – finding traffic and demographics for who’s going to certain web sites.  Only works for larger sites.

Software Tools

Traction software – tag articles and send information out daily to the right people in the organization.

June 9th – Wargaming Event – Noon to 4pm…

Posted by campsean - 16/04/09 at 11:04:07 pm

Oregon Chapter Meeting

Surprise!  How Business War Games Shock Strategists into Beating the Competition—an intensive half-day program where you participate in a genuine business war game!

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009      Jake’s Grill, Portland, OR     Noon – 4:00pm

Networking Event – 4:00pm to 6:00pm – Jake’s Grill

Program Description

What would you do if you were the GM CEO? Or Alan Mulally of Ford, Akio Toyoda of Toyota, Tom Purves of BMW, Robert Cosmei of Hyundai, or another industry leader? And not only what would you do, but how well would your strategies work?  Here’s your chance to find out. What’s more, here’s your chance to learn how to stress-test your strategies and anticipate your competitors with business war gaming. You might even have some fun while you’re at it. Not to mention the cool Top Strategist bragging rights, complete with official certificate and web-wide recognition, you and your team will secure if you win the war.

War games and simulations almost always lead to surprises. Why? Not because they have more decimal points or curvier demand curves. Rather, because they help us think better. They help us take competitors into account realistically, not optimistically.

They help us focus on cause and effect. They help us think things through and see the big picture. They help us learn to think strategically.

And while there are no sure things in life, business war games tilt the odds in your favor. That’s what happened for companies like British Airways, GlaxoSmithKline, Shell, Weyerhaeuser, and a couple dozen more around the world, when they worked with Advanced Competitive Strategies. You’ll get a taste of what they discovered in this special, hands-on, half-day session facilitated by Mark Chussil, ACS’ Founder and CEO (www.whatifyourstrategy.com), a veteran of 100 business war games and a frequent writer and speaker about business war-gaming.

Speaker

Mark Chussil

A highly rated, thought-provoking, and entertaining speaker, Mark lectures and consults around the world about strategic thinking, advanced business war games, and computer simulation. Mark has worked with ACS clients around the world, including Astra Merck, AT&T Wireless Services, Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), British Airways, DuPont, GlaxoSmithKline, Kodak, Methanex, Nortel, Novartis, Organon (Schering-Plough), Petronas, Shell, Sprint, Sprint PCS, USWEST (now QWEST), Weyerhaeuser, and others.  Mark earned his MBA from Harvard University and his BA from Yale University.

Location

Jake’s Grill

611 SW 10th Avenue

Portland, OR 97205

Phone: 503.220.1850

Directions

http://www.mccormickandschmicks.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=content.display&pageid=96&id=21

Registration Fees (Includes: Presentation, Full Breakfast & Networking)

SCIP Members – $35.00

Non-Members – $45.00

*Please Note* Registration will close via the web Monday, June 8, 2009 (EDT).  If you are not able to meet the deadline, you will be able to register on site.

To register, please click the link below:

http://www.scip.org/Training/EventsDetail.cfm?itemnumber=7156

Agenda

Breakfast and Program:  Noon to 4pm.

No Host Networking Event: 4pm to 6pm

Contact Information

Sean Campbell, Oregon Chapter Chair email, sean@cascadeinsights.com, 503.631.7552.

Robyn Reals, SCIP Education Manager, email, rreals@scip.org, 703.739.0696 x107.

Cancellation Policy

Cancellations not received in writing by Tuesday, June 2^nd, 2009, will not be refunded.  

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