It must be accompanied by extensive training in ways to develop the information, record it, analyse it, and act upon it. The need is vast. It is estimated that more than forty percent of workers are information workers who manipulate information as a frequent, primary activity. Regardless of their function, such workers spend a good proportion of their time acquiring, using, and sharing structured information. The problem is that most of these workers are simply not efficient at doing so and this leads to worker stress and lost business opportunities.
Organisations are therefore grossly under-utilising their human capital.
A recent survey published by Reuters Business Information clearly shows that the worldwide burden of keeping up with the information explosion has led to soaring executive stress, loss of job satisfaction and physical ill health. The reports concludes that finding ways of dealing with the information tidal wave is now one of the most urgent worldwide challenges facing business . Since the end of the Second World War, an enormous investment has been put into developing methodologies and tools to render government intelligence services effective at gathering, analysing, and disseminating information. When the Cold War finished in the early 1990s, many of the government intelligence personnel moved across to the commercial world and introduced intelligence techniques to commercial organisations in order to improve their competitiveness. Competitive Intelligence is a disciplined and efficient approach to seeking out information from the environment and turning it into actionable intelligence.