Page 19 - WAD 2023 March

Identification of security threats to business (critical infrastructure Competitive intelligence technology in a corporation (a
facilities (enterprises), corporations (companies), and financial company) is a procedure for collecting and processing
institutions (banks) is one of the tasks for competitive intelligence information about the competitive environment. Competitive
at the corporate level. intelligence technology is an intelligence cycle consisting of five
stages:
Identification allows the management to determine the type or FEATURE
category of threats and the possibility of their quantitative and • determination by the company of the goals that it wants
qualitative assessment. In addition, during the identification to achieve as a result of the implementation of
process, the possibility of influencing a particular threat becomes intelligence and analytical activities;
clear. Each enterprise or banking institution is engaged in the
systematic detection and classification of threats, as well as the • collecting information;
assessment of their materiality.
• sorting, processing, and evaluating the received
This is facilitated by the capabilities of competitive intelligence information;
services, whose employees form a list of significant threats
for each enterprise of critical infrastructure, a corporation (a • analysis of disparate parts in order to turn them into
company), and a financial institution (a bank). Each list is different strategic knowledge about past activities, work
and depends on many factors. Competitive intelligence is a efficiency, strengths and weaknesses, and special
“competitive early warning technology” that requires company intentions for the future of other market participants;
management to pay special attention to recognizing danger at
an early stage before it becomes a full-fledged crisis, as well as • using the information received to develop management
identifying early signs of favorable opportunities before others. decisions.

Competitive intelligence has a strategic nature, the mechanism The complexity of using competitive intelligence technologies
of which provides a solution to the tasks of strategic marketing lies in creating and configuring a complex of reliable sources of
analysis. At the same time, competitive intelligence differs information as well as in their professional processing.
significantly from marketing intelligence in its proactive nature
of searching for “weak signals” related to changes in market Competitive intelligence platforms and programmes (tools)
trends and competitors’ actions. aggregating information about competitors via the Internet.

Competitive intelligence is not a kind of marketing activity. The In the conditions of globalization of the economy, the growth
scope of competitive intelligence tasks is quite broad; it is, first of competition, the digitalization, virtualization of the economy,
and foremost, work aimed at gaining competitive advantages. and the development of information technologies, platforms
and programmes (tools) of competitive intelligence are
Thus, competitive intelligence, which is characterized by particularly popular among business structures at the present
monitoring risks and chances, can be interpreted as a mechanism stage, aggregating any mentions of competitors using the
for strategic forecasting and ensuring the safety of the Internet, based on online marketing:
company’s activities. Competitive intelligence as an instrument
of information and analytical support for ensuring security of 1) Crunchbase (https://www.crunchbase.com/)
critical infrastructure facilities, corporations (companies), and 2) SimilarWeb (https://www.similarweb.com/)
financial institutions (banks). 3) At Sprout Social (https://sproutsocial.com/)
4) Moz (https://moz.com/)
Competitive intelligence instruments and technologies make it 5) MOAT (https://moat.com/; https://moat.com/solutions/
possible to ensure business information security, which is more analytics)
important than ever in the event of a full-scale war. and other.

The instruments (tools) of competitive intelligence include Verification, analysis and processing of information are
technical and software tools, regulatory, technical, and legal important stages in the implementation of competitive
documents, methods, and techniques that ensure the collection, intelligence. The information obtained by any method requires
processing, analysis, and provision of intelligence data to analytical verification and evaluation. The information coming
management. from outside is characterized by an appropriate degree of
reliability, depending on the degree of reliability of the source
Properly selected methods, technologies, and instruments of and from where the information came to the source.
competitive intelligence form a universal system that will allow
the company’s management to respond promptly to changes Efficiency of the competitive intelligence is ensured not only
in the situation on the markets, assess risks and opportunities, by controlling access to information, but by its adequate use
predict them, and, as a result, make the right management to help the customer in performing the tasks.
decisions. At the same time, it should be understood that All these and many other topics are revealed in the book
in theory and practice, there is no clear list of competitive developed by the team of the leading experts of the “Consulting
intelligence tools used. Company “Sidcon” (Ukraine)
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