Confessions of a Corporate Spy
Spies Available at Wholesale Rates
It's difficult to tell exactly how much competitive intelligence is going on in the marketplace. Gartner estimates the business-intelligence market at about $30 billion, of which CI might arguably be considered a small slice. About 80,000 people have the term competitive intelligence in their LinkedIn profiles, although a wise soul in this business might consider using a different term of art to describe himself--or stay off LinkedIn altogether.
CI is usually within the purview of marketing departments. The largest companies with aggressive CI practices in highly competitive industries--Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble come to mind--have entire departments devoted to the mission. Smaller businesses, or companies less focused on competitive behavior, will have one or two analysts, who will rely primarily on industry publications and research reports compiled by outside firms such as Accenture and PwC and supplement that with their own spot research or research from outside contractors.
At smaller companies, CI is an additional task dumped on a midlevel marketing person. It's one of those things that everyone seems to know has to happen--right after all the other things that need to be done. Companies like mine serve to fill the skills gap at small and midsize companies, or to supplement the research of large businesses with some burst capacity.
Sales figures are a fairly typical competitive-intelligence target and, frankly, it's considered grunt-level research. But imagine the value of this information to a competitor. If you know how much revenue a company expects its stores to earn, you can start making projections about how profitable each store might be, how often the managers will try to goose revenue with a sale, the likelihood a given store will stay in its current location given the rent it's probably paying--you can guess at much of the company's strategy.
Industries vary, of course, but revenue numbers are a financial intelligence home run, right up there with gross margin, units sold, inventory figures, customer counts, and cash flow. It's also exactly the sort of thing a business needs to understand about its competitors to effectively price and promote a new product.
I left that Talbots feeling relieved, if not a little...dirty. Third time's the charm, I suppose. This kind of social engineering is like hacking people, seeking a weak point for entry. I was basically laughed out of two other Talbots stores on my first couple of tries. Somehow, word hadn't quite gotten around. I'm consistently surprised by what can be learned from a friendly conversation with the right person. The only thing more surprising has been what I've learned without talking to a soul.
