The industries that are making the best use of competitive intelligence are the most volatile ones with the highest stakes. Telecommunications and pharmaceutical firms each make up about 10 percent of SCIP's membership, says spokesman Charles Eaton. Aeronautics, defense contractors, and computer and information services are also among the most sophisticated users of competitive intelligence. Nolan, who worked for an unspecified government intelligence agency for 22 years, now numbers many of the country's major corporations among his clients. Nolan's group analyzed the four other potential bidders and discovered the client would come in dead last unless it could alter its pricing structure.
Competitive intelligence can also prevent costly capital mistakes.
One consumer-goods manufacturer client hired The Futures Group to get information to help decide if building a new plant would give them an advantage over the European competition. Harkelroad's group got information from the local equivalent of the building supplies office and talked to equipment manufacturers and suppliers. They discovered that the competitor had so radically improved the manufacturing process with new equipment that the client's proposed plant would be obsolete even before ground breaking. You just have to know what to look for, how to find it, and what it means. Whether you hire an outside consultant or build an internal competitive intelligence structure from the ground up, the important thing is getting needs-driven information to top decision makers, says Harkelroad.