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While the field of competitive intelligence blooms into a new dimension within the corporate structure, an ever-growing number of companies and independent consultants advertise their "unmatched" experience and unique service capabilities in the CI arena. The fact of the matter is that despite the growing popularity of CI activities and the stellar growth of the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), CI professionals are still in the adolescent phase of definition of duties, mission parameters, ethical standards, and educational requirements.

One of the risks associated with assigning a CI task to any consulting firm outside the handful of nationally recognized companies in the field is that of finding oneself with little more than an expensive collection and editorial cut of open source information - mostly gathered via the Internet. As in most cases, the first step to establish a baseline for what to expect from a product or a service is to educate oneself about the subject and to understand how the products are being developed.

By browsing through the following links you will be able to develop an idea on what is currently available to the CI professional over the Internet, and to evaluate more accurately the quality of the professional services you solicited.

The Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals is a good source for general information about the field. With over 6,000 members and a busy calendar of events, SCIP is to date the leading force behind the definition and recognition of the CI profession.

The US Department of Commerce web site has an outstanding collection of information on business and trade. "Stat-USA" is one of the best sources for general trade and economic info - it requires a subscription but the fees are minimal. It is definitely worth exploring.

The US Department of State publishes extremely valuable Country Reports on Economic Policy and Trade Practices. The Australian Department of foreign Affairs and Trade has also a number of interesting publications and reports similarly to the UK's Office for National Statistics. If you have never heard of JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization), be prepared - there is more here than meets the eye.

Here are some classics sources for corporate data:

EDGAR online
Dun & Bradstreet
Bloomberg
The Thomas Register of American manufacturers
Hoover's online

Other interesting sites include:

Fortune 500
Forbes 500 Top Private Companies
Companies Online
Annual Reports
Yahoo - Companies

News and time-sensitive information about companies can also be found via any of the following:

The CNN Financial Network
Yahoo Company Directory
Sockfind (by Lycos)
DailyStocks
Marketguide.com
IPO Central
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition
The Red Herring Online
PR Newswire
Yahoo News and events - Reuters

The following are a few interesting examples of sector-specific sources:

The Top 100 Promotional Agencies
Bio Online and BioSpace
The FDIC Directory
Mining Technology
Offshore Technology
The Transport Web
The Top Lobbying Firms
Cyberstocks

Indirect information can often turn into invaluable intelligence and, once again, Internet sources are innumerable. However, here are a few examples:

Antitrust Case Summary Browser
OSHA Database of inspections and violations since 1972
The Federal Trade Commission searchable archives
US Patent Database
InterNet Bankruptcy Library

Don't forget that the Internet is more than the World Wide Web. Key pieces of business intelligence have been known to appear on mailing lists, newsgroups, and bulletin boards. Dejanews is the leading search engine for Internet discussion groups (with over 50,000 within its reach), while Liszt is leading the pack of mailing lists directories.

Once again, the difference between information and intelligence is often obscured today by the massive amount of information available online. A quick review of the previous links should remind us that even large amounts of information might have no intelligence value at all. Also, traditional forms of intelligence collection can still prove to be far more effective despite the overwhelming quantity of data in a digital form.

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