To what extent can competitive intelligence and benchmarking help a firm’s global strategy?

To what extent can competitive intelligence and benchmarking help a firm’s global strategy?

First I would like to shed some light on the concept of competitive intelligence and its role in the firm’s global business strategy. Competitive intelligence is the process of using business information in an intelligent way so that it can help in making successful strategic business decisions. It is important to differentiate between information and intelligent information. Information is all over us. Businesses have sometimes such an abundance of information that it becomes difficult for them to handle it. Intelligent information is the process of analyzing information and extracting useful information from it that is not a time waster but acting on this would yield competitive advantage for a business. So if information is intelligently analyzed and utilized, competitive intelligence can be achieved and hence it would play a positive role in formulating the global strategy of the organization.

Benchmarking is a comparative process. In this process a business can be compared to other successful businesses and learning can be done from them. These lessons learned can be applied carefully in the business context of the less successful business and a global strategy can be formulated for future progress and success.