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| A man stands
against a wall at O'Hare airport, peeking over the top of his newspaper and counting how
many passengers board a rival airline's flight. He's gathering competitive intelligence
the way it's been collected for decades. Recently, though, Marc Friedman has gathered far
more information, far faster by sitting in a cubicle in suburban Chicago, sipping coffee,
and checking out Web sites. He doesn't even need to spring for a newspaper or the James
Bond trenchcoat with the turned-up collar. As Mr. Friedman has discovered, the Internet is creating a vast new arsenal of capabilities for those skilled in gathering intelligence on competitors' moves, on suppliers, and on customers—while leaving the unwary more vulnerable than ever. The reason isn't even that nonpublic information is posted on the Web. It's that so much information is there in one place, as companies use their Web sites to provide details that might attract customers, partners, suppliers, franchisees, or just about anyone else. These days, it's pretty hard to overlook the telling help-wanted ad or the press release that somehow never generated a story in a newspaper even though it's important to your understanding of your competitor. "There tends to be a lot of good information in one place," says Mr. Friedman, until recently manager of market research for Andrew Corp., a maker of telecommunications antennas and cable. Leonard Fuld, a competitive-intelligence consultant, says: "What's on a Web site collectively may not be duplicated anywhere else." For example, Allied Signal's Web site provides revenue goals and reveals the company's production-defect rate along with its plan to improve it, says Robert Aaron, a principal of Aaron-Smith Associates, a research consulting firm. Similarly, Mail Boxes Etc. provides data on its average franchise, including square footage, number of employees, operating hours, and more—valuable insights for a competitor. Many companies typically will link all their press releases, including ones that the media didn't pick up, as well as help-wanted listings that may provide clues about expansion priorities. Visiting a trade association Web site when he was controller of Stone Container's specialty-packaging division, Gary Owen noticed that a rival had won an association award for a new process using ultraviolet-resistant lacquers. The site also revealed juicy details like the machines' configuration and run rate that Stone's engineers could use to dissect the competition. Jim Nowakowski finds he can use "push" technology to troll the Internet. He has harnessed Inquisit (www.inquisit.com) to suck in continually all information it finds on "plumbing and Japan," for a client of Interline Creative Group, his direct-response marketing company. Recently, Inquisit deposited in his e-mail box a report that an official in the U.S. embassy in Japan had written on the plumbing market there. The report explained to his client "why one of its major competitors was so strong," Mr. Nowakowski says. "It helped him fill in a big missing piece." MCI, the long-distance carrier, sweeps the Net for information on competitors and packages it daily into a variety of specialized summaries for sales reps. "It brings them up to date and gives them something they can look over quickly on the way to a customer call," says Victoria Harriston, special projects coordinator at MCI. "They've got something fresh to use in their dialog." The Internet gives snoopers easier access to competitors' hometown newspapers, which are diligent about revealing things about their major corporate citizens. Of course, financially oriented Web sites are another gold mine because of regulatory requirements that make publicly held companies reveal so much information and because of the increasing number of services that tap into stock analysis. Likewise, patent sites and repositories of technical papers can be terribly valuable, because scientists are raised to publish their discoveries. In the days before the Internet had reached the public consciousness, Oracle was founded on a database technique, called SQL, that IBM researchers described in a technical paper. Oracle beat IBM to market with software using the technique and has since grown to $6.7 billion in revenue and $25 billion in market capitalization as that technique came to dominate mainframe databases. "Chat rooms" can be a good but time-consuming way to ferret out competitive intelligence. Kevin Donlin, owner of Guaranteed Resumes, regularly visits a chat room on AOL where peers from around the country talk about their income and clientele. "With some analysis, I can apply their data to my situation," Mr. Donlin says. But many companies are getting wise and are forbidding people from discussing technical topics on the Internet. And, of course, if it's impossible to tell whether the woman you're chatting with on-line is really a man, what's to keep someone from leaking false information about their employer's plans and confusing any snoopers? Counterintelligence, anyone? 'BRAVE NEW WORLD' IDEAS A friend divides business ideas into FBCs and BNWs. FBC stands for "faster, better, cheaper." And, with much of business benefiting from the speed with which computers' costs have dropped for decades now, lots of people have produced good FBC ideas. But a funny thing happens now and then—maybe even often, these days, given how quickly the rules of business are changing. Companies sometimes produce a BNW idea—BNW standing for "brave new world." What follows are snippets on some products that, while probably not revolutionary, show what's possible when companies shoot for a BNW rather than just incremental progress. WEB WALKMAN With audio becoming more widely available on the Internet, it didn't take long for a company to go the next step—letting people load that audio into a Walkman-like device that they can take with them. Audible.com has created partnerships with more than 60 companies that provide audio over the Internet—including Random House Audiobooks, CNBC/Dow Jones Business Video, and CBS SportsLine. You can even get Garrison Keillor's monologues from A Prairie Home Companion, to keep you amused during your power walks. In total, the start-up company offers thousands of hours of speeches, lectures, magazine articles, and television and radio programs. Here's how it works: A user goes to Audible's Web site and downloads a recording of, perhaps, an article from the latest issue of Harvard Business Review. (Context isn't available yet, but we'll get there.) Or the user goes to any other Web site that has recordings based on RealAudio technology. The user plugs the Audible player into a docking station attached to his personal computer and fills it with as much as two hours of downloaded audio. The player then can be used like an enhanced Walkman—in addition to being able to simply play the audio, a user can also create as many as 16 bookmarks to make it easy to return to a particular spot in the recording. The Audio MobilePlayer, which includes a docking station and headphones, is priced at $199. If it really catches on, maybe people will go back to listening and will stop trying to answer e-mail while driving their cars, meaning all that swerving on the roads of Silicon Valley will stop. For more information: www.audible.com. DIGITAL SECRETARIES Wildfire Communications, which has developed an electronic assistant that uses speech recognition to manage an individual's telephone calls, is about to launch a version that will do the same for small firms and work groups within large companies. Wildfire acts like a secretary, asking who's calling, then querying the user about whether she has time to take the call. If the user is busy, Wildfire can schedule a call for later. Because Wildfire can link to computer databases, it can then return the call at the appointed hour by locating the appropriate phone number. It can forward calls from an office, tracking the user down if she is traveling. It can do the same for faxes. To keep records of phone calls, Wildfire can add the caller's name and information to a contact-management system or some other corporate database. Wildfire even recognizes frequent callers and greets them with an, "Oh, hi." Because Wildfire operates using speech recognition, it's possible to place a call, or pick up messages, without having to hit any buttons (more good news for drivers). With the Enterprise version, the Wildfire features can be expanded to a local area network. That means, for instance, that the user could grab a phone number from a general database and record interactions there, rather than just using a database on her personal computer. In addition, it's possible to route calls to others on the local network or to send group messages. Now, if only Wildfire could make coffee. . . . Enterprise Wildfire users will buy phone cards and pay for software licenses. However, the product, which will launch in late summer or early fall, has not yet been priced. For more information: www.wildfire.com. FACE TO (VIDEO) FACE As videoconferencing moves to the desktop, Intel and Microsoft are again dominating the field. Although the video is mediocre both with Microsoft's NetMeeting and Intel's Business Video Conferencing 4.0, the two software packages can provide real benefits through their document-sharing capabilities. Both help far-flung conference participants work together on reports or presentations, by letting everyone simultaneously view documents and any changes that are being made or notes that are being taken. That ability to share information is turning out to be more important than being able to see clearly the faces of all the participants on a call. Beyond the common capabilities, each system has its own set of niceties. Intel's system, which relies on its ProShare technology, has a Private Pages option, which allows participants to take notes during a conference without disturbing others. Intel's system also puts a large button on each person's screen, showing who controls the cursor. Microsoft's NetMeeting features a "whisper" mode, which lets a user send private messages to another individual in a multipoint conference. Initials appear next to the cursor to show who has control. The systems are no panacea. For most day-to-day collaboration, especially in a workgroup whose members are familiar with one another, video isn't crucial. Video calls can even be chaotic if users aren't experienced enough to settle on a moderator and establish rules for taking turns. Still, they seem very helpful when one person is broadcasting to many, as with press conferences or corporate announcements, or where the perception of intimacy is important, in consumer markets such as banking. Intel's system lists for a little less than $1,200, including video and audio components and other hardware. The NetMeeting software is free. For more information: www.microsoft.com/netmeeting/ or www.intel.com/proshare/conferencing/apps/. TAMING THE INTERNET Alexa offers a novel alternative to typical Web search engines. Many engines offer up any site that contains specified keywords, a brute-force approach that often yields odd results. Alexa operates by watching how its users navigate the Internet and analyzing how sites relate to one another. It then relays to subsequent users the intelligence it gathers. For example, Alexa may notice that those who go to nbc.com often move to other TV network sites, so it may provide links to ABC, Fox, and Lifetime. When people get to Fox, which not only runs a TV network but also has a movie business, Alexa may find that they want to check out other film makers, so it may provide links to Universal Studios and Warner Brothers. Alexa gains additional information by letting users vote for or against a given site. It provides the results to subsequent users so they can better guess whether they're headed into a blind alley. Alexa also provides basic information about sites—such as the number of visits each site receives, to whom it is registered, and statistics about sites' freshness, number of links, and speed. In addition, Alexa provides an archive. When you come across the dreaded error message "404 Not Found," Alexa can still give you a snapshot of the page. The service isn't perfect. Sometimes it suggests odd sites to visit, based not on relevance but on idiosyncrasies of users who have gone before. Still, more than 200,000 people have downloaded Alexa. And because the quality of the information is directly determined by those who use it, the more, the better. For more information: www.alexa.com. NEW MEANING FOR ROOM SERVICE Along with its offerings of satellite televisions, minibars, and bathrobes, London's Royal Garden Hotel has taken a big step into the digital future with rooms that offer a view into cyberspace. The luxury hotel offers full Internet connections to all guests from all bedrooms, as well as from its conference, banquet, and business centers. While guests could obviously already dial out and reach the Internet through an access provider, the hotel speeds things up by providing high-speed lines to link guests into a Web server that it maintains on the premises. The hotel will even provide guests with temporary e-mail addresses. The cost for the whole Internet service is $12 a day. In return, the hotel notes, guests will have better access to the Internet's full range of "fun sites, business links, newspapers, news and chat groups," and, yes, "adult sites." For more information: www.royalgdn.co.uk. SMILE, IT'S CANDID COMPUTER Imagek says it will unveil later this year a film cartridge that can be inserted into standard 35mm cameras, transforming them into digital cameras. According to Imagek, its EFS-1 cartridge will be capable of storing 30 full-resolution pictures and will be reusable 100,000 times. The EFS-1 system will come with an adapter that connects to either PCs or Macintoshes for instant viewing, storage, or e-mail transmissions. It'll be quick, too—two seconds between shots and less than a second to download images. The cartridge can, of course, be removed when the photographer wants to go back to conventional film. At about $1,000 initially, EFS-1 won't be cheap. Anyone who already has a 35mm camera can simply buy a second, digital camera for as little as $200 these days and switch back and forth all he wants, between digital and conventional photography. But,as with all things digital, the price of EFS-1 should fall quickly. We'll just have to wait and see what, uh, develops. For more information: www.imagek.com. |
