Abstract

Competitive intelligence (CI) plays a significant role in business management and practice. Management of companies have relied on competitive intelligence information to support decisions to give them an edge over their competitors. Companies use intelligence information to stay abreast and be in tune with the business environment. The purpose of this study is to understand the role of CI, the sophistication and intensity attached to it and examine the degree of knowledge of the processes in a firm. The exploratory study used triangulation and a survey to meet its objectives. Due to the sensitivity of the schedule, only 15 personnel were assigned to this task in the organization. The results indicate that XYZ Company is aware of the role and importance of CI but it is yet to fully utilize its potential. A major finding is that no single coherent CI process is being followed but rather a series of ‘adhoc’ measures are used. This implies that there is the need to develop systematic procedures for generating CI data and streamline the processes used in analyzing such information.

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