Competitive Intelligence: Can Free Sources do the Biz? :Competitive Intelligence: Can Free Sources do the Biz? Karen Blakeman Wednesday 3rd December 2008 Online Information 2008 11:15 - 11:45 - Gallery Rooms 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 1


Slide 2:03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 2 Karen Blakeman RBA Information Services Tel: 0118 947 2256 Int. Tel: +44 118 947 2256 karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk http://www.rba.co.uk/ blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/ on Facebook – Karen Blakeman Twitter: karenblakeman This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License


What is competitive intelligence? :What is competitive intelligence? Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process of monitoring the competitive environment and analyzing the findings in the context of internal issues, for the purpose of decision support. SCIP – Society of Competitive Intelligence professionals Competitors, suppliers, customers, potential acquisitions, potential partners and alliances Past and current state of the market and industry Forecasts Legal, regulatory, political, economic and cultural environment 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 3


Company information :Company information The ‘big boys’ - stock exchange companies are relatively easy Share price information Yahoo Finance (‘major’ stock markets only) http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/ Google Finance http://www.google.co.uk/finance http://www.google.com/finance/ Go direct to the stock market site RBA Stock Markets and Share Price Information http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htm 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 4


Yahoo – share price comparisons :Yahoo – share price comparisons For example, share price trends– compare a company with its main competitors, its sector and the main index 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 5


Google Finance :Google Finance 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 6


Share price information :Share price information Companies that have ceased trading merged been taken off the stock exchange More detailed analyses, comparisons, customised reports Priced services! 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 7


Company financials - free resources :Company financials - free resources Stock exchange listed companies company’s own web site SEC Edgar (soon to be replaced by IDEA) http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml, SEDAR http://www.sedar.com/ (Canada) Smaller companies official company registries, for example http://www.companies-house.gov.uk/ Official Company Registers http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm Sole traders no financials use directories especially export and membership directories might not find any information at all apart from name and address 03 December 2008 8 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk


Historical annual reports - SCoRe :Historical annual reports - SCoRe http://www.score.ac.uk/ SCoRe (Search Company Reports) Catalogue of printed company reports, both current and historic, held in UK libraries Libraries that hold copies of the reports are listed together with the earliest and latest years of a collection’s holdings A good place to pick up clues on past corporate relationships 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 9


Company financials – free vs priced :Company financials – free vs priced Free good for just a few known companies and current information often limited to larger, quoted companies Priced for identifying a group of companies using several criteria by sector, country, turnover, number of employees etc. for extra download formats, analysis options for cross country searching access to information on dissolved companies access to older information beware services offering you ‘hard to find’ information at extortionate prices 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 10


Looking at a company’s web site history :Looking at a company’s web site history Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/ takes periodic snapshots of web sites around the world shows how they were presenting and marketing themselves and their products in the past not guaranteed to work domain name may have been owned by someone else in the past 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 11


http://www.archive.org/ :http://www.archive.org/ 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 12


Directories :Directories Use directories to track down information on smaller companies Industry/market research need to use several sources to get as comprehensive a picture as possible Search on industry/sector name and directory OR directories Google oil OR petroleum directory OR directories Exalead.com, Live.com, MSE360.com (oil OR petroleum) AND (directory OR directories) 03 December 2008 13 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk


Industry and market information :03 December 2008 14 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk Industry and market information Free general statistics demographics, government statistics, industry overviews, “anonymous” data Priced industry specific market shares named companies brand names detailed rankings


Statistics key starting points :Statistics key starting points Statistics Sources http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stats.htm Official Statistics on the Web http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz Nationmaster http://www.nationmaster.com UK Official Statistics http://www.statistics.gov.uk/default.asp often get better results by running a Google advanced site search 03 December 2008 15 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk


Free industry and market research :Free industry and market research Individual publishers tables of contents, executive summaries, free sample chapters Government reports Management consultants Company annual reports Academic sector Trade and industry press Take care when combining data from different sources coverage, sample size, method of collection, and analysis will be different for each source 03 December 2008 16 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk


www.alacrawiki.com :www.alacrawiki.com 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 17


Market and industry research :Market and industry research Free government bodies e.g. http://www.export.gov/, http://www.bisnis.doc.gov/ regulatory bodies e.g. in the UK - Competition Commission trade, industry, manufacturing associations, trade and industry press http://www.reportlinker.com/ searches free resources but you have to pay to refine and display results http://www.free-research.com/ browse and display free resources, includes references to priced research http://www.researchwikis.com/ mixed quality, often US biased and not all the data is sourced or referenced 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 18


http://www.reportlinker.com/ :http://www.reportlinker.com/ 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 19


http://www.free-research.com/ :http://www.free-research.com/ 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 20


http://www.researchwikis.com/ :http://www.researchwikis.com/ 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 21


Search engines :Search engines Try and imagine what you would like to appear in your ideal document Use terms such as “market share”, “household expenditure”, “per capita” Google numeric range search TV advertising spend forecasts 2008..2015 Repeat the most important term(s) in your search one or more times Change the order of your search terms Limit your search to a type of organisation e.g. gov.uk Limit your search to specific document formats e.g. xls, doc, pdf Use Google, Yahoo, Live …and give MSE360 a go 03 December 2008 22 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk


Intellectual capital :Intellectual capital Key people, ‘know how’, expertise R&D pipeline products/services now in the market products/services in active development products/services in initial research stage Availability of information varies depending on industry e.g. information on highly regulated pharmaceutical industry is available through priced services monitor trade and industry journals, newsletters, magazines Patents - beware free services as these are not comprehensive if ‘mission critical’, hire the services of an experienced patent searcher Trademarks, brand names, slogans and advertising 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 23


Advertising :Advertising Run a search on Google video and YouTube to track down television and cinema adverts Visit4Info http://www.visit4info.com/ European press, TV, cinema - last 3 months of adverts free Adforum http://www.adforum.com/ Creative Club http://www.creativeclub.co.uk/ Adslogans http://www.adslogans.co.uk/ Adverteyes http://www.adverteyes.biz/ who said what, where and when – now priced Coloribus.com - Advertising Archive http://www.coloribus.com/ 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 24


Video, audio, images and other ‘stuff’ :Video, audio, images and other ‘stuff’ Check out video and audio search tools for interviews, television and radio news items Corporate communication via YouTube channel http://www.blinkx.com/ for television and cable news services Flickr photos may reveal additional information on events, sponsorships and links to other companies and people Facebook? Twitterstream? 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 25


News :News Free check coverage, archives, search options for individual newspapers http://www.abyznewslinks.com/ http://www.kidon.com/media-link/index.php search engine news options e.g. Yahoo, Google, Live, Ask have only the last 30 days of free news advanced search options limited and unreliable no source list, and sources frequently change key industry publications may not be included 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 26


News :News Individual publications and newspapers, BBC, radio (audio), television (video) etc Silobreaker http://www.silobreaker.com/ Chipwrapper http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/ 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 27


http://www.silobreaker.com/ :http://www.silobreaker.com/ covers free resources news, blogs, video, images geographical location of stories people networks use as a starting point for more in depth research 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 28


Chipwrapper.co.uk :Chipwrapper.co.uk Google Custom Search engine Searches everything available on 15 free UK News Sites No date sort option but typing in the month and year sometimes works 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 29


News :News Individual publications and newspapers, BBC, radio (audio), television (video) etc Silobreaker http://www.silobreaker.com/ Chipwrapper http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/ Archive news some web based news sources and individual publications go back several years and are free subscription and pay as you go options such as Factiva and LexisNexis far better for highly focussed, targeted research 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 30


Blogs as sources of information :Blogs as sources of information Blogs by industry gurus and experts are a good way of keeping up to date with what is happening in a sector Look for the Blogroll on a relevant blog Google Blogsearch http://www.google.com/blogsearch Ask.co.uk – Blogs and feeds Live Feeds search - http://search.live.com/feeds Blog and feed search engines, directories http://www.technorati.com/ http://www.blogpulse.com/ 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 31


Blogpulse :Blogpulse 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 32 Click on the graph to see “Trends”


Blogpulse Trends :03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 33 Blogpulse Trends Shows how often your search terms occur in postings – can compare up to three searches


Cluuz :Cluuz http://www.cluuz.com/ Uses the Yahoo database “cluster graphs, image extraction, and tag clouds” Quickly updated and dynamic maps Results vary from one day to the next, one hour to the next 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 34


Cluuz :Cluuz 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 35


So can free resources do the biz? :So can free resources do the biz? Up to a point Priced services can save you time, may offer more focused searching and more analytical options Free can help with highly specialised, niche markets “difficult to find” information on certain types of companies rumour, gossip You need to use both 03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 36


Slide 37:03 December 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 37 Karen Blakeman RBA Information Services Tel: 0118 947 2256 Int. Tel: +44 118 947 2256 karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk http://www.rba.co.uk/ blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/ on Facebook – Karen Blakeman Twitter: karenblakeman This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License UKeiG Stand 734