First and foremost, both start with the CEO, who is responsible for painting the company's vision for the future, leading the development of strategy and articulating both to employees at every level and on every occasion in order for them to work toward company goals. In like manner, though perhaps less publicly, the CEO must inform the company's intelligence team precisely what's on her mind about the future, what keeps her awake at night and what strategic decisions are looming, so that the team can find, distill, package and present intelligence to the relevant decision makers in a timely fashion and keep important developments on the company's radar screen. Second, neither planning nor intelligence is an event. Data washes over all of us in an relentless wave. Capturing relevant data, however, turning it into useful information and then transforming the latter into actionable intelligence is a hallmark of outstanding companies.
Relevance is decided by the company's leaders.
Relevance criteria relate to the direction the company is moving, the strategies it is pursuing, competitive pressures, industry trends and global forces that can render industries obsolete. Most of the raw data that go into an intelligence process come from public sources, such as newspapers, magazines, agency reports and industry databases. Internet search engines can facilitate this collection process. The potential for information overload is great, so all raw information must be tested against the relevance criteria. If it does not pass the test, it must be discarded.