Smart Services: Competitive Information Strategies, Solutions and Success Stories for Services and Businesses

Citation

Sen, B. (2002), "Smart Services: Competitive Information Strategies, Solutions and Success Stories for Services and Businesses", New Library World, Vol. 103 No. 9, pp. 352-352. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2002.103.9.352.1

Competitive intelligence (CI) is an expanding field of expertise as businesses struggle to survive in the current economic climate. It is an area in which information professionals are well equipped to play an increasingly active role and as such this book is an interesting read for all those involved in business or business information.

Books on this topic are welcome, particularly with the focus of this publication being on the service industry, which has not been adequately supported.

There are 15 chapters crammed full of information, ideas, and case studies. The key points or bullet points given at the end of each chapter are useful to reinforce important issues and enable the reader to focus on the pertinent issues. Much of the content is thought provoking and leaves the reader wanting to know more. To assist with this there is a useful appendix of “Further resources” spilt into subject headings for easy identification.

The main content of the text is divided into three sections:

1. 1.

   (1) The competitive landscape.

2. 2.

   (2) The competitive issues.

3. 3.

   (3) The competitive game.

The competitive landscape identifies the need for businesses to be much more aware of forces which could have adverse impacts on their success. Traditional competitors are discussed, however the biggest threats to business do not always come from traditional or obvious areas. So throughout this chapter a broad spectrum of competitive forces are discussed including government competition, internal competition and sabotage.

Moving on to competitive issues in Part 2. To study your competition you need to know who they are. Sometimes it is not always obvious, so the first chapter in this section is full of tips on how to track down your competitors using the wide range of business information sources available, both print and electronic. The author then moves on to look at a range of more specific business issues such as your competitors, strategies, services, marketing issues, levels of service, differentiation, areas of investment and key personnel. Intelligence in all these issues can be of value to inform your strategic business decisions and secure competitive advantage in your chosen market sector.

Part 3 is about acting on the information you have gathered. To be successful it is essential to develop what Sawyer calls the “competitive intelligence mindset”, or CI culture. The CI culture involves all staff, which means raising awareness of the importance not just of gathering intelligence, but analysing, learning from the information and using it.

Although the focus of this book is on the service industry, much of the content could be applied to any business. This is a practical text for the business sector.