With threats of cutting budgets to a competitive intelligence function looming, justifying its existent is always a challenge. An obvious way to justify an unit are the deliverables that land on decision makers’ desks. The deliverables can either make or break a competitive intelligence unit within months or weeks.
In order to sell the long-term viability of an unit when there are limited amount of resources, it would be wise to link the unit’s raison d’etre to the defined Key Intelligence Topics. If defined properly, KITs can be used to influence the strategic decisions to reach corporate objectives. As result, keeping an unit as is during an economic downturn just makes good business sense.
To strengthen a case for keeping a competitive intelligence unit considering the KITs, assess the following:
- What are the current KITs?
- Do the KITs meet the needs of decision makers?
- What are the potential KITs for the company?
- What is current return on investment of the unit?
In the next post, I will address the issue of what to do when the money is not there for the tools to make the unit function correctly.
