September 2002

No. 009

"Not a kind of Kiss-and -Tell Security"

What follows is not a kind of kiss-and–tell security transgression. Government intelligence is controlled by a complex pattern of security classifications – and rightly so. The rules of confidentiality limit disclosure for business intelligence as well. Of course, since the basic principles of intelligence are the same for government and business. So how does a business intelligence outfit best serve its CEO, executives, and other senior management policymakers regardless of whether the decisions are political or commercial? The cutting-edge service today is delivered by market intelligence, a program that extends CEO protection from firm vulnerability and firm threat of performance (i.e. profitability).

No two business intelligence outfits are the same. They could not possibly be because no two businesses, markets, or countries are the same. Nevertheless, the process of intelligence never varies. In all modern outfits, the intelligence process is composed of four basic steps:

(1) The CEO policymaker, with input from executives, and other senior management, selecting what needs to be known

(2) Market intelligence outfit collecting the information

(3) Market intelligence outfit transforming this collection of information into finished products

(4) Market intelligence outfit team distributing the finished intelligence products to the CEO policymaker, then CEO discretionary flows to executives, and other senior management who execute policy.

These are the steps required to produce modern intelligence no matter what the business or what the issue at hand. This four-step process for selection, gathering, analysis, and distribution of market intelligence will help familiarize the CEO, the policymaker, with the way intelligence works and with the people who make it happen.

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