intelligence solutions
Intelligence Solutions
throughthe Use of Expert Tools
Avner Barnea, the Ono Academic College, Israel
Since 2000, there have been
intensive efforts in Israel to expand
the use of expert tools to support the
objectives of competitive intelligence.
I have touched upon this issue in two
previous articles and in presentations as
well (Barnea 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008).
As these efforts in Israel have
grown, I have decided to look at this
issue through the eyes of those who
have made use of these tools by focusing
on firms that have purchased them and
are utilizing them in their competitive
intelligence (CI) program. More
than one CI dedicated tool has been
developed and offered to the Israeli
market, but most were not successful
or have given up the CI practice and
moved to more profitable areas. I have
specifically looked at the purchasers of
one current tool, which I will refer to as
Specific Expert Tool (SET).
I have to confess that I’m a great
believer in the use of expert tools to
support CI activity and, as such, I have
been promoting it in Israel and abroad
as much as possible. I cannot imagine
that CI will lag behind while the
world moves forward by utilizing these
types of tools for all kinds of business
activities.
ABOUT THE RESEARCH SET
The Specific Expert Tool purchased
by the persons interviewed in my study
was developed in Israel at the end of
the 1990s to answer the needs of the
local CI market. The developers did
not conduct thorough research before
starting to develop the SET, and many
elements were added later to match the
requirements set by their clients.
The main features of the SET were
the capabilities to:
Volume 12 • Number 2 • March/April 2009 www.scip.org 41
• Gather information from the web,
both automatically and manually. Table 1: Number of SET
• Receive information from primary Systems Installed
sources mainly through the internal
network. Year Number of firms
• Index all the information received
from both internal and external
2000 2
sources with sophisticated search
and retrieval options.
• Analyze primarily by adapting 2001 3
link analysis discipline to CI
requirements and creating dynamic 2002 3
mapping of information about
the changes in the competitive 2003 4
theaters, competitors, suppliers
and other influential factors in 2004 4
the competition. Text analysis
capabilities were also supported. 2005 2
• Prepare reports from the
information gathered and analyzed, 2006 2
and disseminate the information to
internal users through the Outlook 2007 1
system.
• Integrate with other internal Total 21
information technology systems
(mainly business intelligence) to
create a better “big picture.” firm while only 40% were requested by
• Support CI professionals to potential clients. (See Table 1 for the
better manage the overall process, number of systems installed.)
monitor KITs responses and other SET successfully introduced itself
related tasks. to most of the large industries (see Table
2). Although it was a leader in this
field, the company experienced slow
BASIC INFORMATION market growth and was unable to reach
The level of success selling a significant market share and revenues
the system was much lower than in Israel.
anticipated. In all, about 250 Israeli The plan to move to international
large and medium sized companies markets was shelved as a result of
have active CI functions. Most of insufficient resources.
them, however, are not using any CI As I reported in my 2006 paper
expert tool. The SET firm estimates on CI in Israel, approximately 50% of
that they have presented their system the large Israeli exporters have active
to 100 potential clients based in CI programs. In the total SET installed
Israel. Approximately 60% of these base of 21, 14 companies operated
presentations were initiated by the SET primarily in local markets and 7 in
intelligence solutions
base, 16 of the firms had only one CI
Table 2: SET Systems professional, and only five had more
Installed by Industries than one. The small size of these CI
units gave reason to believe that first
class expert tools might be welcomed
Industry Number of firms
and would play a significant role in
improving their performance. As we can
Telecom 4 see, however, the expectations were not
met.
Food 2 capabilities (4)
Defense 2 THE SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH
As shown above in Table 1, 21 SET
Pharma 2 systems were sold in Israel between
2000 and 2007. Eighteen of the people
Finance 1 in the companies who purchased the
system took an active part in this
2 research. Those who opted out of this
research did so for reasons that are not
Energy 2 relevant to the study.
This research was conducted
Advertising 2 primarily through personal interviews.
During 2008, I met each of the CI
Medical 2 professionals in the 18 companies and
devices discussed with them the questionnaire
outlined below. Senior executives
involved in the CI process were not
Hi-Tech 2
directly interviewed, but I learned of
their views through the CI professionals
Total 21 who participated in the survey. I
also spoke with CI professionals of
companies that did not purchase SET
global markets. The above results clearly to hear their views.
indicate that most Israeli companies
that have CI functions are not using
any CI expert tool. Question 1. Who initiated acquiring
the SET?
In Israel, a company with $30- Results (18): executives as observed by the CI staff.
50 Million in revenues is considered CI professional (15)
medium sized, and higher revenues Senior executive (2)
makes it a large company. In the SET Other (1)
installed base, five firms with $30-50
million in sales, 16 with more than The purpose of this question was
$50 million. SET is considered useful to find out who initiated the process of
mainly for larger firms in the local exploring the opportunity of acquiring
market, although we see there is also a the SET in each firm. The results show
demand among smaller firms. that it was usually purchased at the
initiative of the CI unit. A follow-up
CI units in Israel generally consist question revealed that senior executives
of a staff of one operating under were generally not involved until the
considerable pressure to deliver results final stage of the acquisition despite
while working with a limited allocation the efforts of their CI staff to involve
of resources. In the SET installed them earlier. However, my impression
42 www.scip.org Competitive Intelligence Magazine
was that the CI staff made insufficient
efforts to recruit the executives from
the outset for fear that they would not
support the purchase process.
Question 2. What were the main
reasons for purchasing the SET?
Results (18):
General desire to improve CI
CI professionals felt they needed
better tools (10)
Unsatisfactory results from CI to
meet executives needs (4)
This question attempted to
determine the main motives behind the
decision to acquire the SET. A follow-
up question found that it took quite
a long time, in some cases up to six
months, to acquire internal approval
for the purchase. The responses suggest
that the reason for purchasing the SET
product came primarily from the CI
staff, who felt that they could perform
better by using enhanced tools.
Question 3. What was the overall
satisfaction with CI “products” in
the firm before installing SET?
Results(18) (1=lowest, 5=highest):
Rating 3 (10)
Rating 4 (8)
This question was focused on
discovering the level of satisfaction with
the CI from the point of view of the
It appears that the CI directors were
sensitive to the need to supply better
end products and felt that utilizing an
expert tool would allow them to deliver
higher value reports to their internal
customers.
Question 4. What was the overall
satisfaction of CI users 6 to 12
months after SET was installed?
Results(18) (1=lowest, 5=highest):
Rating 3 (8)
Rating 4 (9)
Rating 5 (1)
 intelligence solutions

Table 3: SET Contribution to CI work

Total 5 4 3 2 1
(Highest) (Lowest)

18 - - 3 5 10 Improved gathering process

18 - 5 8 5 - Improved analysis and final CI

28% 44% 28% products

18 - 3 15 - - Improved CI dissemination

18 8 10 - - - Improved KIT management

18 - 9 9 - - Improved CI efficiency

18 2 8 8 - - Improved CI reputation

This question sought to discover
whether the installation and use of the
SET expert tools changed the level
of CI response to the needs of their
executives. Comparing the results
of questions number 3 and 4, it is
apparent that the level of satisfaction
attributed to the CI products after
activating the SET is higher, but the
change is not dramatic. These results are
consistent with my contention that SET
and programs similar to it are merely
tools and CI has other issues to address
for better performance, which were not
covered in this survey.
Question No. 5. In your best
judgment, how much did SET
contribute to your CI performance?
This question attempted to
identify how SET has contributed
to CI from the point of view of the
CI professionals. The results indicate
that the foremost improvement was
achieved in the analysis process, but
the satisfaction level with respect to the
gathering performance of the SET was
low. Using the SET, the CI staff became
more effective while their perception
was that their professional reputation
had improved. A further question
revealed that all the respondents except
one indicated that its lack of an early
warning system was significant. It must
be emphasized that the high score for
improving KIT management shows
that CI units need tools that will help
them to fulfill many missions they run
simultaneously.
The developers of the SET have
admitted that the strongest capability
of the system was in the analysis, while
gathering was considered less effective.
They felt that the primary challenge
of CI lies in the analysis and this is
where CI is expected to give meaningful
added value. They took the information
gathered in this study and intend
to improve the system’s gathering
capabilities.
Question 6. Has the SET fulfilled
your initial expectations?
Results (18):
Yes (16)
Moderately (2)
No (0)
This question attempted to find
out the bottom-line perspective of
how satisfied the CI staff was with
the SET. The results show that the
CI staff favored the SET, though
with some reservations, as indicated
in the responses to Question 5. The
expectation that the SET would develop
into a more advanced tool was only
partially met.
Question 7. What was the reason
for deciding not to purchase SET?
Results (12):
Lack of resources/ too expensive (5)
Not important enough (5)
Did not meet our needs (1)
Have another solution (1)
This final question was asked of
the twelve CI directors of companies
that ultimately decided not to buy the
SET. They had all seen presentations
of the SET and had given serious
consideration to becoming equipped
with this system.
It appears to me that there is a
direct correlation between the “lack of
resources” and “not important enough”
responses. My perspective is that if the
tool was found to be important enough,
they would have found the resources to
buy the system.

Volume 12 • Number 2 • March/April 2009 www.scip.org 43

intelligence solutions
Conclusions
Since the mid-1990s, Israel has
been recognized for its outstanding
software products in a wide range of
industries sold successfully worldwide.
Expert tools for CI have also acquired a
strong reputation, as demonstrated by
the recent Fuld and Company software
report.
My 2006 paper indicated that the
picture regarding the adoption of CI
tools in Israel was more complicated
than originally thought. While CI
has had slow but steady growth, its
support tools have suffered from a
limited distribution. The rapid growth
of the software industry in Israel has
affected the development of specific
CI solutions, but unfortunately the
demand has been lower than expected.
The SET product did not gain
momentum or become a conventional
intelligence solution for the local
CI market needs. The gap between
the high expectations of SET and its
low sales results was not only a great
disappointment; it also discouraged
efforts to further develop this solution.
This focused study revealed that
local firms were not prepared to invest
in new CI tools that would enable CI
professionals to perform better. As a
result, most CI professionals have to
continue using generic tools like Office,
which offers unsatisfactory solutions to
their CI program needs.
My discussions with the companies
revealed that many executives did
not support their CI staff members’
44 www.scip.org Competitive Intelligence Magazine
requests to purchase SET, possibly as a
result of not understanding CI needs
rather than a lack of resources. This
has implications for the vision of the
potential value of CI.
This study shows that the high level
CI solution has not reached its potential
target market due to a lack of support
by senior executives who did not see it
as critical to move CI forward in their
firms. A technological solution cannot
become a standard in an industry
without being recognized as such by
those who are making the decisions and
allocating the resources for this purpose.
Finally, while the SET was not
the perfect solution, it was a tool
that improved CI performance in
the companies that implemented it.
This observation provides additional
encouragement to continue presenting
CI discipline, its business value and
needs in executive development
programs and academia, and to make
education on this subject an integral
part of the activities of every CI
director.
References
Barnea, Avner (2005). “Link analysis as
a tool for competitive intelligence.”
Competitive Intelligence Magazine,
V8/4 4 July-August.
Barnea, Avner (2006). “Israel study
on competitive intelligence.”
Competitive Intelligence Magazine,
V9/2, March- April.
Barnea, Avner (2006). “Why start-
up companies fail to adopt CI.”
Competitive Intelligence Magazine,
V9/1, January-February.
Barnea, Avner (2007). “Why is CI
methodology still behind CI
technology tools?” Competitive
Intelligence Magazine, V10/3, May-
June.
Fuld, Leonard (2008). Intelligence
Software Report 2008-2009 http://
www.fuld.com/Products/ISR2008/
HomePage.html.
Avner Barnea is a former senior member
of the Israeli Intelligence Community.
He holds a MA from the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and graduated
from the Top Executive Program in
Marketing Management from the Tel
Aviv University Graduate School of
Business Administration. He is a strategic
consultant in the field of competitive
intelligence and business strategy in Israel
and abroad. A lecturer on competitive
intelligence in the MBA program of the
Ono Academic College, Avner is also a
guest lecturer on competitive intelligence
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Business School and in various business
executive training programs. He has
extensive experience in the integration of
competitive intelligence systems in Israeli
corporations. Avner can be reached at:
avnerpro@netvision.net.il.