Competitive intelligence is all about gaining competitive advantage (for your organization). For doing this, you have to be doing something different from what your competitors are doing.

You need to look for more and better intelligence than what is available to everyone else. What you can find on the internet and other secondary sources is also available to every other analyst in your  industry. Talking to (the right) people is the only way to get more than what everyone else has…

Besides, not all the inputs you need for decision-making  are found from secondary sources. This is true in under-documented sectors or unorganized industry segments, particularly in emerging markets like India. There is simply no data being collected on large areas of economic activity in India.

Deep insights on industry and customer dynamics are almost never found documented neatly on easily accessible web pages. When they are, they are generally outdated. Further, hearing it from the horse’s mouth has much more value than reading it in a report. Here is one example… You may read a report on a financial services company that tells you that its customer service is poor. On the other hand, a customer may tell you that “The people at the company’s office are very arrogant. They act like they are doing you a favour by giving you a loan.” The customer may go on and in the same breath tell you contrasting experiences with couple of the company’s competitors.  The latter certainly gives you more insight into what the customers experience on the ground.

Yet, I have seen that most competitive intelligence analysts shy away from reaching out and talking to people they don’t know. There are several reasons for this.  You feel diffident if you are approaching the wrong person for the information you need. Why will my competitor tell me anything about himself? He wont. But you can ask someone else, who knows the competitor intimately.

Another common reason is the fear of talking to strangers – what if they reject your approach? Making a stranger comfortable talking to you, is not easy for everyone. Some people naturally put others at ease and are able to chat with almost anyone. Others are not able to do this. But talking to strangers to collect competitive intelligence is not all art. You can learn how to do this, by systematically planning who to approach, and how to approach them.

So don’t miss the most valuable source of competitive intelligence… talking to strangers.

If we look at the traditional approach of report writing, the first draft consists of a table of contents (ToC). And everything else follows. The ToC enables the researcher to device a structure and scope of the report. But it has its own limitations especially when the final deliverable is in the form of a presentation. There is no scope of graphical representation in traditional ToCs. Also, there is limited foresight in expecting further analysis out of the given scope and available data.

To overcome such limitations, here in ValueNotes, we use a slide deck design (SDD) mechanism. Now you will wonder what is an SDD? How is it drafted? How is it different from a ToC? Here is an example of an SDD that we created during one of our projects wherein we had to study the market for an electric component:

An SDD is a simple yet very effective method of putting pen to paper. Here you conceptualize the slides on a piece of paper at the beginning of the project without actually making a slide on your computer. It shows how the slides will look like when it is ready to be delivered. You need not be an expert artist to draft such a deck. It is just an indicative picture of your final output. It is an extension to the project setup in addition to the ToC.

The need behind creating such a deck was fairly simple; to give a face to our planned output. It has various advantages to serve through the entire project. It helps the project manager to see through the entire project plan and streamline the activities to accumulate the required data points.

For example in the diagram shown above, we were able to picture the number of graphs & pie charts well in advance. We knew how many of such diagrams were required to depict the findings of our report. It also gives you opportunity in the hind sight to look at the further analysis which, if by mistake, was left during the initial project plan. It also eradicates the gap of understanding between the analyst and the project manager. To put it in simple words, in many cases in the past we have seen that the analyst and the manager are in agreement of the content in the beginning but both of them perceive it in different ways in their heads. By creating a visual representation like this the analyst knows what exactly is expected out of his efforts in making a presentation. It saves a lot of time in doing reworks. It really helps when all the members of the team are on the same page and look at the same picture! As Aristotle once said “The soul never thinks without a picture!”

Applying the initial screening criteria for partner selection may bring out unlisted companies as potential partners. Information about the bigger ones maybe easily available from published sources, but it is difficult to gauge the exact potential, background, legal status and goodwill of smaller companies (especially those operating in under documented sectors in the country). How do you do it if you are not based in India or there is only limited information available on public domain about your partner? In such a situation, hiring a local due diligence expert is highly desirable. A local due diligence expert will have knowledge about which government agencies to approach to obtain information about the company in question and what could be the other possible avenues through which the credentials of the company can be verified. Due diligence is all the more essential if the company in question is a small or medium sized enterprise.

A local expert helps you check on the ground reality

Truth about the company’s financial situation can be unearthed by looking at its filings with the Registrar of Companies. Agreed, that this can be done easily by someone based out of India as well. So where does the need for a local due diligence expert arise from? There is no questioning the fact that the company’s reputation, business ethics, relationship with suppliers and vendors, management and its scale of operations are equally important. This is where the local expert will essay an important role. A local expert will help you check on-the-ground reality of your potential Indian partner.  We were once involved in researching a company and found that it did not have a physical existence and was present only on paper. This would not have been possible if we had not done on-the-ground research by hiring a local associate.

Being a local, your expert can comfortably establish a connect with the concerned vendors or customers and extract important pieces of information about the prospective partner, which otherwise is nearly impossible to get from published data. A local expert will also be helpful in physically verifying the presence of a company’s facilities and reality behind its proclaimed scale of operations. He can even have one-to-one discussions with some of the employees. These conversations can give deeper insights into the company’s operations. Our due diligence team prevented a motorcycle manufacturer from entering into a fraudulent deal. Its prospective partner was an Indian distributor who had misrepresented its sales figures and scale of operations. We found this through interviews with employees, suppliers and vendors of the concerned firm. We also verified the scale of operations. An intensive background search also revealed that the promoters were involved in criminal cases.

Don’t forget background checks and litigation status

The due diligence process would be incomplete without doing a check on the litigation status of the company and verifying the background of the company’s senior management. Such background searches can be conducted by getting in touch with government authorities such as the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, Company Law Board, Competition Commission of India, consumer cells and local police stations among others. The due diligence activity also gives an idea about the company’s political clout.

Due diligence in India is quite tricky and helps in filling the gaps in information which occur due to non-availability of data about unlisted companies. Even if information is available, due diligence can help you verify its authenticity. It can help you identify activities which could eventually result in shelving the deal. Or on the other hand, the positive results could make you more confident about your partnership.

Desk research involves going through humongous amount of information available on the internet. The first step involves using search engines effectively to get that kind of information. To get relevant and effective results, certain search methodologies can be used that can help narrow down the scope of information. For eg. if information has to be looked up on the internet for “Telecom Software producers,” it sounds difficult. First of all, if there is no technical expertise it gets very difficult understanding, what telecom software means. Before starting random search on the Internet it is very important to decide how to search and map out a path which will help get the required result. Mentioned below are a few methodologies which if put into practice while using search engines can yield relevant and useful results.

Keywords hold the key

First step is the usage of correct and appropriate keywords or search syntax. When writing search syntax using quotation marks (phrase search), Boolean commands and correct order helps narrow down the results. For eg: If you are looking for pharmaceutical labs in India in Mumbai and not in Pune then a good and well framed keyword can be “pharmaceutical labs” OR “pharma laboratories” AND “Mumbai” AND NOT “Pune”

Another technique which can result in better results is using plurals, alternate spellings and synonyms. For eg. “Elevator” is used in USA while “lift” is used in the UK. If the region from which information is required is known then usage of appropriate keywords helps cut down irrelevant information.

Specific domain search

Domain search limits your search to a specific domain and is also very helpful in narrowing down the search criteria, resulting in better and more relevant results. For eg. if you want labour statistics of Alabama from a US government site, then using the following search term will ensure that the results which are provided are from government websites. “labor statistics alabama domain:gov”

A few US domains are:

• .com   =   a commercial business
• .edu    =   an educational institution
• .gov    =   a governmental institution
• .org     =   a non-profit organization
• .mil     =   a military site
• .net     =   a network site

Various countries have their own domains and using domain search when looking for country specific or geography specific information is very useful. Here is a link to all country domains.

Typify your search

Another very helpful tool for all researchers is “filetype.” Many a times the information required has to be of a certain filetype/file format or rather we know that the information is available as a certain filetype/file format. When typing in keywords we can specify the filetype/file format we want and hence the results thrown up will be the type we require.

The syntax to be used is filetype:pdf or filetype:ppt. For eg., if we are looking for information on supply chain management in pdf format, the syntax should be: supply chain management filetype:pdf. The following screenshot shows that all results are for the pdf filetype.

There is search world beyond Google

One of the major pitfalls for us is that we limit our search to Google. Other search engines also give news which might not be covered in Google. The best way to search is to use a Meta Search engine, which crawls though all the major search engines. In a Meta Search engine, we can also see which search engines shows results for the specified query. Example: Dogpile. In the following picture, you can see that one of the results was shown only in Yahoo.

Go advanced

The best place where almost all of these methodologies are put together is the advanced search feature for search engines. For each and every search engines, advance search options are provided which really help in searching better.

These are a few tips that can be used to make search more effective and refined. These methods will surely help to cut down all the extraneous information and help get focused and useful results. This all, added to the technical expertise possessed by the person searching for information, yields quicker and better results. These tips do help out but having a good background and knowledge about the subject leads to more precise results. Subject matter expertise combined with good knowledge of Internet and search engines techniques makes searching the net for required information an easy task.

If we compare the efficient Australian regulator with the Indian counterpart, the MRTPC (Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practice Commission) and its successor, the CCI (Competition Commission of India) – the findings are dismaying (as usual if I might add!). Both the ACCC and the MRTPC were established in late 60’s and restructured in late 90’s; however the MRTPC/CCI falls way behind the ACCC in terms of regulatory efficiency and progress…

The ACCC has an elaborate organization structure whereas CCI still lacks a formal organization structure with divisionary roles; the CCI had only 15 employees (at December 2009) as opposed to ACCC’s total 702 employees by the same time; the ACCC has listed a set of functions to follow while the CCI on the other hand still lacks teeth as its powers are yet to be notified.

As a result of the above-mentioned shortcomings, by December 2009, CCI reported nine pending cases which included that of for instance, the Jet – Kingfisher (airlines) alliance.

Jet Airways and Kingfisher airlines formed an alliance by end 2008 for fuel management, ground handling, cross-selling of flight tickets to select destinations and majorly route-rationalization. Their combined market share rose to over 45% of the domestic civil aviation industry. Obvious reports of price hikes and charges of cartelization followed but, MRTPC could not do much; it probed into the case for almost a year! and finally ruled in September 2009 that there was no cause for an inquiry. However, in June 2010, CCI had to re-start the inquiry based on a consumer complaint; the verdict is awaited (and it’s the close of September 2010 now…). Some CCI officials have stated issues such as under-staffing to be the main reason for its backlogs!

…and this leads me to another (related) thread of thought about difficulty in getting regulatory approvals, setting up infrastructure for doing business in India. Moreover, at a time when the government is aiming to spend $1.5 trillion over the next 5 year plan period on infrastructure, I wonder if the soft infrastructures in place are adequate / efficient to support it. According to the World Bank Group report, 2010 that ranked 183 economies on ease of doing business, India ranked a lowly #133.

• Considering the individual evaluating parameters such as ease of hiring staff, India ranks #104 whilst Australia, U.S. both rank #1.
• In terms of ease of enforcement of contracts (number of procedures to be followed from time of filing the application, total time for processing in calendar days etc.), India ends up at a second last rank #182 whereas Australia and the U.S. rank #16 and #8 respectively.

I got a detailed insight on this aspect while working on India entry strategy for a Factoring services company; wherein I found that the lead-time for registration of the company post-submission of the application to the RBI is approximately 6 months. Also stamp duty on the service i.e. Factoring, is a state level subject and there is no uniformity in the rates of stamp duty across states…all of which renders doing business in India an unsurmountable task !!

My question is – In view of such inefficient regulatory systems / hurdles; can India aspire to join the league of economic / financial superpowers such as Australia / U.S. / U.K.?