Academy of MARKET INTELLIGENCE (AMI, http://www.mkintel.org/) Monthly Brief

 

aUTHORED BY tOM gROOMS

 

April 2004

 

No. 028

 

“Intelligence Service - Intelligence System"   

 

An intelligence service or intelligence system is a less natural, far more complex and complicated structure.  To an intelligence unit, information is merely a powder keg.  It is vital, but not sufficient or adequate for its level of purpose.  Moreover, the powder keg's potential has to be the right mixture; right, that is, for the particular entity or person the intelligence unit is designed to serve or things could blow-up.  Indeed, the intelligence unit determines just what information the decision-maker will need.  The unit is responsible to assure that the information is collected as completely and efficiently as possible, then analyzed and evaluated in light of the entity's or person's unique needs.  Then finally, comes the make-or-break role for any intelligence unit: assuring that this organized information - this intelligence - is made available in precisely the right form and at precisely the right time.

The CEO determines what information and direction is needed in a market intelligence system.  Intelligence units do not occur naturally.  After all, intelligence itself is not a naturally occurring substance like water that seeks its own level.  It is a refined product, like oil being processed to gasoline.  Any person, government or business wanting a continuous and trustworthy flow of intelligence must be willing to commit the necessary dollars to build an intelligence service or intelligence system from scratch and done right the first time.  It is important that each intelligence unit is tailored made.  And if you think for one minute that this is a haphazard or hit-or-miss endeavor, think again, very hard before you act.  You need to think of the intelligence service or intelligence system as though your life depended on it - because your life or career does.  It is obvious to those educated in intelligence that you have to build an intelligence unit that will harvest the information gathered into intelligence products needed to make timely decisions to benefit the entity or person. 

Now we can really begin to see why access to intelligence - to organized information - has become so vital to decision-making in today's fast-paced competitive world.  Quite simply, by providing a steady flow of organized information - most importantly for CEOs and the business organization - an intelligence unit is uniquely able to help our policymakers and decision-makers cope with three key features of modern times.  Policymakers and decision-makers of earlier times never really had to confront these features which follow next in this series, at least not nearly to the same extent.

  

 

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