Introduction (Toni Wilson – Chair, SLA CI Division)

By popular demand, members of SLA’s CI Division are again blogging for the FR365 effort during the week of September 26, focused specifically on competitive intelligence processes and applications. We are delighted to provide content and an understanding that will help the FR365 audience understand what CI is and how it can be applied to add value across organizations. Helping ourselves and our organizations become future ready is the ultimate value delivered by a productive and successful competitive intelligence program. We hope you will enjoy and apply some of the concepts and practices we share with you during CI Week.

by Toni Wilson, Cincinnati Chapter, Competitive Intelligence Division

A common message mentioned during nearly every CI Division session at this year’s SLA conference was that competitive intelligence is not about our organization’s competitors, but about keeping our organizations competitive. This is an important clarification, but what does it really mean in practice? A couple of topics, to which we can and should apply our CI process, can have the effect of changing a marketplace as a whole – ultimately impacting our organizations and our existing competitors in the future.

One important topic on which we should focus as part of a CI effort is the role of changing technologies. Consider the role of streaming technology and its effect on cable and satellite TV services providers, as a current example. Huge numbers of individuals and families are cancelling their traditional cable or satellite services to depend on online streaming services for entertainment and/or invest in tools that make the process more convenient (I’m personally a fan of Roku). I’m not aware of the statistics, but this trend must be having an enormous effect on the providers of the traditional services. If these emerging technologies are not an immediate threat to these businesses, they likely will be in the future. Did they see this coming? Maybe…if they were future-looking and their CI functions were focused on the emergence of the streaming technologies, in addition to the activities of their established competitors. If not, they must be struggling to respond to these marketplace changes, which certainly impacts their respective abilities to compete successfully. I’d rather be the intelligence practitioner who brought this trend to the attention of my decision makers years ago than the individual forced to explain why revenues are being eroded today.

Competitive intelligence can also help identify opportunities for organizations, in addition to future threats. An obvious example includes the government legislation and regulations that have been created around the demand for environmental protection and the popularity of sustainability. Related laws were developed over a period of time – a focused CI process could easily identify opportunities for new products and services by using published bill- and regulation-tracking information, among other sources. The laws have impacted a number of industries, the most successful of which identified the related opportunities early and created and executed plans to take advantage of them.

While I’m certainly not recommending this, it’s possible that if the only thing we accomplish is to help our organizations understand the technologies and legal or political trends impacting their ability to compete successfully in the future – even if we don’t focus on individual competitors – we will be successful in adding value and making a real and lasting difference into the future.

Toni Wilson is the principal consultant at MarketSmart Research Services. She is an experienced competitive intelligence practitioner, having performed hundreds of projects over the past 20+ years, in a variety of industries and throughout the world. Prior to establishing MarketSmart Research in 2000, Toni was a corporate intelligence professional at LexisNexis for more than a dozen years. She is an expert in sources, tools and techniques for intelligence collection, and frequently speaks to groups and coaches individuals regarding the CI process. Toni is a volunteer leader, prolific author, enthusiastic mentor and professional award winner. She is the current chair of SLA’s Competitive Intelligence Division.

by David Meerman Scott

A fascinating convergence is upon us right now bringing a perfect opportunity for open-minded information professionals.

In the world of marketing and public relations, scale and media are no longer the deciding factors. The world works in real-time now. Speed and agility are an organization’s decisive competitive advantage.

The mantra of the day is: communicate quickly. In real-time.

There is an opportunity for information professionals to make the connection between real-time information and the opportunities and threats to an enterprise as a result. This requires agility. The marketing and PR people need your help because they don’t have the skills to interpret data in real-time like a bond-trader.

Sadly, many corporate libraries have reduced or eliminated their staff and that means  talented researchers and information professionals have been laid off. I’ve had a chance to speak with various information professionals recently and many are downcast about career prospects.

At the same time, many organizations — corporations, nonprofits, government agencies, and educational institutions — finally understand the value of creating interesting information online that serves to educate and inform consumers. People in companies now realize web marketing success comes from creating content-rich web sites, videos, podcasts, photos, charts, ebooks, white papers and other valuable content.

Companies I speak with are trying to figure out who will create the content that they need for their online initiatives. Marketers, executives, and entrepreneurs say things like: “David, I need help. If I knew how to create great content, I’d already be doing it.”

At every speech I deliver I say to corporations one of the best ways to create great Web content is to actually hire a journalist or information professional, either full- or part-time, to help identify opportunities (and threats) and actually create information that will serve as what I call “brand journalism.” Journalists and information professionals are great at understanding an audience, researching, and creating content that buyers want to consume—it’s the bread and butter of their skill set.

What this convergence means to you, a smart journalist or information professional:

You went to graduate school to learn how to research, organize and access information. Yes, the employers who traditionally hired your skills are shrinking fast. But there is an entirely new world out there for you to consider: marketing departments and public relations departments. Please keep an open mind about this.

I’m talking about creating content for a corporation, government agency, nonprofit, or educational institution. You’ve probably not seriously considered that there are potential employers outside of traditional library and information centers.

Yes, there are new potential employers. And they need you and your skills. Now.

You’ve learned that you need to collect information on all sides of a story. You wonder how can you be balanced if you work for the “dark side.” I get that. But if you realize that your skills are in demand right now, you’ve got a new and fascinating opportunity.

You don’t need to compromise your integrity. You still provide authoritative research and access to content. You still practice your craft. You still have followers who care about what you do. You still change people’s lives.

The idea of using your research skills should be to educate and inform, not to overtly sell products. While some of you would rather wait tables than work for “the man,” others of you will find the opportunity refreshing.

It may even make you more marketable for traditional gigs with information hungry enterprises, as long as you are dedicated to providing quality content while pioneering this new way of using your skills.

If I had my marketing dream team, I’d fire the marketing staff and hire journalists and information professionals. I can’t emphasize this enough: you have a role in real-time marketing.

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, and seminar leader. His book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list and published in more than 25 languages from Bulgarian to Vietnamese, New Rules is now a modern business classic.  A recovering VP of marketing for two publicly traded information companies, he was also Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world’s largest newspaper and electronic information companies. David’s popular blog and hundreds of speaking engagements around the world give him a singular perspective on how businesses are implementing new strategies to reach buyers.

Catch up with David at his blog WebInkNow or download his free ebook Real Time: How Marketing & PR at Speed Drives Measurable Success.

Karen Sawatzky, Librarian, Tapper Cuddy LLP, Winnipeg, MB

Reposted with permission from Slaw.

Everyone’s talking about the future. From LegalTech New York, where the closing keynote was the practice of law in 2020, to IT’s role in the library of the future, and SLA’s FutureReady365 blog. It’s interesting to be reading about predictions on where our profession may be going. One document I came across a while ago was the Association of Research Libraries’ 2030 Scenarios : A User Guide for Research Libraries. I started reading it (it’s 92 pages!) to see if it had any application for a law firm library.

Can you imagine the world in 2030? I can’t, but the ARL Scenarios do. It’s not quite the future that I would like to see, but then, is the present what anyone predicted 20 years ago? The scenarios envision a world where researchers are free agents, and universities scramble for funding. (Hmm…how is that different from today, at least the second part?) There are four scenarios presented: Research Entrepreneurs, Reuse and Recycle, Disciplines in Charge, and Global Followers. Each one outlines a particular day in the life of a star researcher, Hannah Chen. The world is described slightly differently in each scenario, but varies on the theme that government funding of universities will dry up, mainly due to declining tax revenues, universities will seek more partnerships with businesses, and both students and faculty will be competing for meaningful positions.

So what are the strategic implications of these scenarios? Scenario 1: Research Entrepreneurs, resonated the most with me. Note the following strategic question that arose:

How do we begin now to develop the library professional of the future – a highly capable and credible service provider who can work directly with researchers with data preparation and curation capabilities? What skills are we currently developing in our library professionals that may not be valued in the future? (p. 39)

Replace “researcher” with “lawyer”, and we’re already at this scenario, at least regarding data preparation and curation capabilities (think compiling case law on a point of law, and determining which resources have the authority to be used to develop an argument). As to the skills we’re currently developing that may not be valued in the future – how about some of the audiovisual equipment training! All kidding aside, most of the skills I have are transferable across many occupations, and even something as library-specific as cataloguing can be useful in cross-training to write computer languages.

So how does this relate to the law firm library of the future? I’ve been thinking a lot about the physical space necessary to define the library of the near future, say in the next five years or so. My current space is fairly traditional – lots of shelving for (mostly) reporting series that are no longer collected, and a small work area. I haven’t quite figured out what is the best use of the space if I had the opportunity to renovate. Should there be more social areas, equipped with comfortable chairs and tables, to encourage use of the library as a place to meet and discuss? Or should it be a quiet area, where lawyers can review the resources they need without being disturbed? My personal preference is to see the space become more conducive to conversation – kind of like the lawyers’ lounge without the bar.

There have been a number of discussions of law library space recently. I especially enjoyed Louis Mirando’s posts, Rebuilding a Law School Library. Any ideas on what the future holds for law libraries? Will private firms outsource part or all of them? Or will it be a competitive advantage to house your own knowledge management team? What skills will we need? What does 2030 look like to you?

Karen Sawatzky is a law librarian at a business law firm in Winnipeg, MB. She is passionate about marketing and personal brand building.

by Dr. Craig Fleisher, Dean, School of Business and Public Affairs, College of Coastal Georgia, USA

The future for business planners, knowledge managers, and special librarians will require enhanced sense-making ability.  In the past, finding and organizing information was the key to competitive success. Those organizations who found it first had advantages that they could often leverage in the marketplace.  Today, most individuals and organizations have excellent access to data and information; in reality, my research has shown that most organizations have too much of both, and too little of an idea for what to do with it.

Making things worse, much of the collected data and information resides in storage (i.e., data warehouses, networks, spreadsheets, etc.) where it gets stale quickly and cannot serve any viable competitive use. Like milk, information spoils if it isn’t treated and utilized. The half-life of time for acting on competitive information continues to shrink in this day and age and isn’t likely to lengthen anytime soon.

Future ready means that analysts in companies will need to work on the front-end with their data acquisition and information management/knowledge professional colleagues, making sure that what is collected provides the missing pieces to the puzzles that analysts and planners know they need to put together to support decisions. The need to make decisions drives our analysis. Our analysis needs drives our data collection. The rule for future success: Don’t collect data or information for which we do not already have analytic mechanisms in place to use it within. Why buy and store milk if you are not going to drink it?

Dr. Craig Fleisher is a former President of the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals, author of several foundational books in CI and analysis, and was awarded its Meritorious recognition for lifetime contributions to the field.