Survey: North America Companies Set To Increase Competitive Intelligence Budgets Despite Uncertainty

Online, November 10, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA), a global strategic market intelligence and advisory group, releases results from its 2011 Global Market Intelligence Survey, which show that nearly 70% of North American companies intend to increase their investments in competitive intelligence (also known as market intelligence) in 2012-2013.

As a program, market intelligence collects information about market players and strategically relevant topics and processes it into insights that support decision-making. It helps organizations understand their business environment, compete successfully in it, and grow as a result.

In the Global Market Intelligence Survey conducted in March 2011, GIA looked at the current state of competitive intelligence in 192 large and mid-sized North American companies in the US and Canada, and compared the results with other countries.

The prevalence of competitive intelligence programs in North America was found to be high, with 84% of companies reporting that they have a systematic competitive intelligence function in place. Of these companies, another 84% indicated that their investments in competitive intelligence have paid off. This is higher than companies in Western Europe, indicating that North American companies manage to derive greater value from their competitive intelligence programs and are therefore likely to invest further.

Some of the key survey findings include:
• 94% of the North American companies surveyed agree that they have benefited from competitive intelligence.
• 84% think that their competitive intelligence investments have paid off.
• 42% of the North American companies without a competitive intelligence operation intend to launch one within 12 months.
• On average, North American companies have teams of 10 people with competitive intelligence as their primary role, which cater to 1,162 internal clients. In addition, an additional 93 people contribute to competitive intelligence for their organizations.
• Including human resources costs, North American corporate budgets for competitive intelligence annually are above $2.8 million dollars or 2 million Euros.
• 69% of companies intend to increase their investments into competitive intelligence over the next two years.


More competitive intelligence best practices will be presented at the upcoming GIA Conference in Chicago, which will be held on 14-16 November 2011 at The Drake Hotel, Chicago, USA. Best practices will be shared by seasoned experts who are known to have specific expertise on the topic, representing leading global companies such as Best Buy, Cintas, Cisco Systems, Diebold, DuPont, Fiserv, IBM, Mastercard, Navistar, Siemens, Wells Fargo, 3M Company, and more.

For other information, visit the www.globalintelligence.com or send an email to media(a)globalintelligence.com. 


About the Global Market Intelligence Survey

The Global Market Intelligence Survey looks into the current state of market intelligence activities in international companies and the perceived benefits, how market intelligence supports decision-making, and the anticipated future developments across geographical regions and industries.
The 2011 Global Market Intelligence Survey is the fifth in a series and involved 989 respondents in an online questionnaire in March 2011. Most of the questions were of multiple-choice format to facilitate quantitative analysis. Open questions were also included to add to the level of insight. English was used as the survey language in most countries, while translations to Czech, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish were also in circulation in parts of Latin America, Europe and Africa.