Tools For Thought - Intelegia

On April 29th, 2010, via “Get on the inside track with “Company Follow”“, Linkedin launched its new “Follow” function similar to Twitter.  This announcement should be met with great joy by competitive intelligence professionals.  It is just another tool to use to gather strategic intelligence as discussed in “Using LinkedIn People Search To Profile A Company“.

Upon reflecting on the advantages of using the tool, one has to take a step back and consider the defensive competitive intelligence ramifications of Linkedin’s new toy.

As stated in “Defensive Competitive Intelligence In A Web 2.0 Environment”, there are difference scenarios that can come to the forefront on a daily basis on social media applications.  Now with the “Company Follow” feature, companies will have to reconsider their visibility on the social media tool.

Here are two some discussion points to mull over if your company has profile page on LinkedIn.

1. Is it necessary to have a profile on LinkedIn? - Although social media sites affords companies with an inexpensive avenue to market themselves online, it provides competitive intelligence researchers with a resource to gather information easily.  Reconsider what should be posted and edit the information on the page.

2. What is on employees’ profile? Providing access to employees’ profile has its consequences.  As seen in “Competitive Intelligence Research With LinkedIn - Who’s Hiring?”, significant details can be collected and assessed to anticipate a strategic move.  Figure 1 is screen shot of a list of new hires at Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft Corporation’s New Hires Listed On LinkedIn

Intelegia is always seeking out ways to using social media applications to gather information on sectors, companies, products / services and individuals.  LinkedIn is an efficient tool, if use correctly, to collect competitive intelligence data as seen in the posts, “Competitive Intelligence Research With LinkedIn - Who’s Hiring?” and “Using LinkedIN People Search To Profile A Company“.  Here is a look at applying LinkedIn Answers to access strategic information.

LinkedIn Answers is a database of questions and answers by business experts that are on LinkedIn.  The questions and answers are organized by topic however; users can conduct a basic or an advanced search query.  Figure 1 is image of the index page of LinkedIn Answers.

Figure 1: LinkedIn Index Page

Case Scenario:

As a competitive intelligence researcher in the biopharmaceutical sector, you are asked to find the prevailing trends in the diagnostic kits market.

Solution:

As an alternative to conducting an extensive web search or purchasing a report, you may attempt a search using LinkedIn Answers to gather insights from industry experts.

Figure 2 captures the input process to query LinkedIn Answers using the Advanced Search function.

1. Keywords entered:”diagnostic kits” and “trends”
2. Keywords match in: Questions and Answers
3. Category: “Marketing and Sales” -> “Business Development”

Figure 2: LinkedIn Answers Advanced Search Form With Keywords

Figure 3 is a screen shot of the result given by LinkedIn Answers.

Figure 3: Result For Keyword Search, “diagnostic kits” + “trends”

If the search application furnished more than one page of results, you are able to sort the results by:

• Degrees of separation away from the expert(s) answering the question
• Relevancy
• Date

Clicking on the results will allow you to access the full text of the question and the 10 related answers. Figure 4 is an image of the initial posted question and Figure 5 provides a look at two answers.  (Please Note:For the purposes of this blog post, the names of the individuals that posted the question and answers are not revealed.)

Figure 4: Question Posted To Linked Answers

Figure 5: Answers Posted By Experts

As seen in Figure 5, LinkedIn Answers will highlight the best answer in green.  In the case above, the best answer was provided by a Business Manager, Sequencing and Microarrays, Roche Applied Science, Asia Pacific at Hoffmann-La Roche.    Reading further down on the page, other experts tackle other trends in the diagnostic kit market.

LinkedIn Answers is available at www.linkedin.com/answers

The blog post, “Competitive Intelligence Research With LinkedIn - Who’s Hiring?” discussed the use of LinkedIn to anticipate a strategic move at a competitor through a potential hiring (i.e., job opportunity).  This type of competitive intelligence  research can be an element to a larger initiative to profile a company.

Through the Advanced People Search function on LinkedIn, researchers may gain further valuable strategic insights about a company.  Figure 1 illustrates the advanced search interface.

Figure 1: Advanced People Search Interface on LinkedIn

One of the pieces of strategic intelligence that can be collected from this type of search is profiling a department / function at a company.

Case Scenario: As a competitor to Hewlett Packard in Canada, you are asked to have an understanding about the company’s strategy planning function.

Solution: Using the advanced search interface, enter the following information to build the query based on the case scenario:

• In the “Location” field,  select “Canada” and delete the content, if any,  in the “Postal Code” field
• In the “Position” field, enter “strategy” and select the “Current or past” option
• In the “Company” field, enter “Hewlett Packard”

Figure 2 presents the query when the details are entered.

Figure 2: Building An Advanced People Search Query For Individuals In The Hewlett Packard Strategy Planning Function
Please Click On The Image To Enlarge

Figure 3 is the screen shot of the results based on the submitted query.

Figure 3: Results For The Query For Individuals at Hewlett Packard’s Strategy Planning Function
Please Click On The Image To Enlarge

Selecting the individual with the position of “Senior Business Strategy Manager” leads you to access to the following job description available in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Job Description For The Position Of “Sr. Business Strategy Manager” at Hewlett Packard

From the image above, you can see that the strategic planning function at Hewlett Packard is composed of:

1. Forecasting
2. Budgeting
3. Resource Planning
4. Strategic Direction
5. Financial Controls

Furthermore, you are able to find out that there is an existing competitive intelligence unit at the computer hardware giant in Canada.