Strategic intelligence: The keys to reinventing yourself and overcoming today's challenges
Business intelligence approaches need to reinvent themselves if they are to breathe new life into the competitiveness of their companies and organizations.
On course for collaboration! Discover how collaboration and innovation at the heart of intelligence approaches can turn challenges into opportunities.
While the economic, geopolitical and social context is becoming ever tougher, the challenges facing companies and organizations have been known for many years:
- How can they develop an informed, dynamic and efficient vision of the ecosystem in which they operate?
- How can we better anticipate risks and opportunities in a context of "permacrisis"?
- How can we develop a 10-year forward-looking vision?
- How can we redevelop our capacity for innovation?
- How can you effectively support operational, tactical and strategic decisions?
- How can we improve the performance of our businesses?
The only appropriate response to the challenges faced by all organizations, whatever their size or sector of activity, is to overhaul their information and knowledge management systems, for the benefit of business performance and decision-making.
Monitoring and analysis activities can no longer rely solely on a small number of information professionals, charged with monitoring, analyzing and disseminating all the information useful to the company's businesses and managers.
Let's face it, the daily flood of information to be processed, the ever-increasing number of players, themes and issues to be monitored, and the sheer number of different areas of expertise to be brought together in order to be able to analyze it all make the task humanly impossible if it isn't distributed within the company and across the professions and experts concerned. Newsletter distribution, while useful, is not enough on its own to meet the complex challenges facing companies.
So we're making way for collaboration, decentralization and distribution of these activities. On the one hand, this enables us to support the performance of each of the company's business lines, which have significant information needs, and on the other, to leverage our expertise for the benefit of monitoring and analysis processes. It also optimizes decision-making performance.
"The transformation from a centralized watch, entrusted to a small team, to a collaborative and decentralized model, is not immediate. It takes time, a change strategy, a roadmap and good advice! Fortunately, we're here to support you and share some of the essential keys that will facilitate this transition!"
Governance and processing of strategic information
Formalizing internal governance of strategic information processing is essential, especially when the aim is to extend the scope of contributors.
This means describing the approach, its raison d'être, how it is organized, on whom it relies, its work processes, the responsibilities and resources allocated around the activities of identifying the needs and issues to be resolved, and the collection, processing and dissemination of the information essential to strategic decision-making in an organization. This includes competitive intelligence, knowledge management to capitalize on internal knowledge, and data analysis to anticipate market trends. The aim is to provide a framework that ensures the reliable, secure and efficient use of strategic information, enabling informed and agile decision-making in the face of challenges and opportunities.
A strategic intelligence approach can only be collaborative
The empowerment of business lines and experts plays a key role in the success and usefulness of intelligence and analysis activities within companies. Indeed, each player, thanks to his or her specific knowledge of his or her field, is in the best position to monitor and analyze the information relevant to his or her area of responsibility, as shown by the example of the sales manager who has to keep an eye on his or her customer.
This individual approach complements the collective effort, as understanding certain issues, such as those related to RGPD or AI -Act, requires cross-functional collaboration between different experts. The combination of legal, technical and sectoral skills not only enables richer, more accurate analysis, but also a greater capacity for innovation and reaction to challenges and opportunities. In this way, the direct involvement of the various professions in monitoring and analysis strengthens the company's ability to navigate in a complex and constantly evolving environment.
Strategic intelligence: driving innovation and business performance
Innovation and transformation of business processes, as well as performance improvement, are at the heart of current organizational transformation concerns. By drawing on a wide range of expertise and close collaboration, our monitoring and analysis activities enable us to redevelop our capacity for innovation and respond to known and emerging challenges.
Choosing your business intelligence tool: keys to collaborative adoption by employees
Although many platform vendors claim to offer collaborative business intelligence solutions, the reality is that not all of them effectively deliver on these promises. Beyond classic monitoring and information processing functionalities, criteria such as user experience, ease of use, and comfort of reading and contributing are essential to encourage employee adoption.
The ease with which users can learn to use the system for the first time, and the potential for empowerment, are also key factors. Nobody wants to be trained 4 days in a row to be able to set up a watch.
Don't underestimate the ability to collaborate effectively on all these objects (from sharing sources and information, to managing monitoring portals and newsletters, to creating collaborative documents).
Last but not least, collaboration-specific functionalities - such as the ability to reference users or groups, notification mechanisms, the presence of user profiles, autonomous group management of access rights, and the possibility for employees to autonomously access the information pool created by their active colleagues - are essential if a collaborative BI platform is to be truly effective and widely adopted.
Internal governance of strategic information processing; empowerment of businesses and experts; analysis and collaboration processes; strategic intelligence tools adapted to the challenges; resources allocated to intelligence activities...
So it's really a transformation of watch and analysis activities that those responsible for watch, marketing intelligence and business intelligence initiatives need to carry out, and place at the heart of their company's transformation.
Ready to turn challenges into opportunities with strategic intelligence? Would you like to discuss the transformation of your intelligence activities?
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Article written by : Julien Duprat Arnaud Tupinier
