Meet the Expert
Alden Taylor
Managing Partner, Strategic Insights
- Co-founder of Strategic Insights, with more than 30 years of expertise in strategic intelligence, general management consulting and financial management.
- Has led numerous client engagements in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia focusing on strategy, market positioning, competitive intelligence, benchmarking, organizational effectiveness, and process improvement.
- Expertise spans multiple industries including: energy, franchising, financial services, health care, process manufacturing, consumer products, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications.
- Prior to co-founding Strategic Insights, was a Practice Leader for Business Intelligence Services at Kroll Associates and Citigate Global Intelligence.
- As the former president of BACK Management and Taylor & Company, helped clients improve their competitive positioning, exploit strategic advantages and identify potential merger and alliance candidates.
- At Cresap, a Towers Perrin Company, was a Vice President Global Practice leader.
- At the outset of his career, consulted on accounting systems, mergers and acquisitions and foreign business practices for U.S. and foreign clients at Arthur Young & Company (now Ernst & Young).
- Frequent conference leader and speaker for several industries and associations including: EXNET/Management Exchange, Edison Electric Institute, Planning Forum, United States Telephone Association, and American Management Association.
Meeting Packages from $600
Your Meeting Package Includes:
- All 7 Best Practices
- Pre-Meeting Discovery Process
- One-on-One Call with Expert
- Meeting Summary Report
- Post-Meeting Engagement
The Mechanics of Competitive Intelligence
Managing Partner, Strategic Insights
Risks & Opportunities
Risks
- Committing resources in ways that do not serve your strategic goals.
- For example, a company may commit resources to a new market only to find that a competitor is two steps ahead of their company, has already identified the market and distribution channels, and has already achieved pioneer's preference.
- Being constantly blindsided by various external forces, be it competitors, government regulators, customers, etc.
- Ineffective competitive intelligence means that every change in the landscape appears as a surprise and executives must manage from crisis to crisis.
- Making decisions based on sub-optimal information.
- Both strategic and day-to-day tactical decisions require that managers have the best available information; where corporate intelligence is inadequate, firms risk making decisions blindly or with inadequate or out-dated information.
Opportunities
- Identifying new opportunities with accuracy.
- Effective competitive intelligence enables companies to identify ways that a company may leverage current market conditions and also allows it to more effectively market share or other competitive threats.
- Improves resource allocation.
- Competitive intelligence allows companies to make better decisions with respect to its current pool of resources and prevents costly mistakes.
- Allows companies to plan more effectively for the future.
- Competitive intelligence enables foresight; it allows companies to engage in more effective, evidence-based scenario planning and roadmapping and make better decisions in the short, mid and long terms.
The Mechanics of Competitive Intelligence:
Risks & Opportunities
Expert Topic