Competitive Intelligence v Malých a Středních Podnicích

Abstract

The use of methods and tools of Competitive Intelligence (CI) is still domain of large multinationals enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have a little knowledge about what CI is, how to implement CI and what benefits can CI bring them. Therefore the first goal of the paper is to explain and demonstrate main characteristics of CI and its role in strategic management system together with necessary information support. According research, made in the Czech Republic, main problems of SMEs are lack of financial sources for buying sophisticated and expensive software and shortage of CI experts, due to relatively flat and simple organizational structure. Therefore the second goal of the article is proposal how to implement CI cycle in the environment SMEs. For data collection and data analyses can be used large number of public data sources together with large number of Open Source software application for Data Visualization and for Text Mining. Most important and critical factors of CI implementation in SMEs are appropriate processes and people. Proposed system of CI for SMEs consists of two simple databases: database of events and database of threats and opportunities. CI processes are segmented according current liability of each manager or department to: Competitor CI, Customer CI, Partner CI and Technology CI. For each segment is necessary to establish role "contributor", who is responsible for recording events and thread and opportunities into database. To make the whole CI system work, is necessary to establish also role "coordinator" which is responsible first of all for presentation information to the decision makers and for overall supervision of CI system. At the end of the paper main benefits of proposed system are summarized together with outlook to the next future research.