Design your Intelligence Exit Strategy from the COVID-19 crisis

 

The Corona crisis is harsh and damaging, but the exit is near. In terms of businesses, ‘In two months’ is like tomorrow, because this quarter is a sunk-cost whatever we do.

What do I mean by saying Design when I refer to Intelligence Exit Strategy? A strategy is not something you pull out of your sleeves nor a quick process of decision making. It is a very demanding and quite long process of combining the perceived reality with the CEO’s vision along with the interpretation of operational insights derived from the Intelligence process in the organization.

A strategy must include the Intelligence element. The Intelligence exit strategy is different from the financial exit strategy or the production exit strategy, etc. It means that the Intelligence process in the organization has to be revised.

The first step of the design is to ask the hard questions about our Intelligence process before the crisis. Were we ready? Did we get any preliminary indications of a crisis coming in our industry? Did we gather enough relevant information to help the organization overcome the crisis? Did we foresee any of what has happened to us and the market?. And, maybe, some more questions of this sort. The first part of our revision meant to understand and evaluate the status when Covid19 arose in our market.

The second step of designing our intelligence exit strategy is to inspect deeply the four main pillars on which Intelligence Strategy based on:

Competitive Intelligence (CI) — What had changed with our competitors? Did we lose some on the way? Are there new competitors? Had the technology of the market changed, evolved, abolished? Any new patents on the process? Any changes in the financial terms and structure of the market? and some other relates questions

Market Intelligence (MI) — Are there new segments? Do we need to start our segmentation process from scratch? What had changed with our customers’ flavors and preferences? New buying habits? New marketing channels? New PR opportunities? Are there new substitutes for our products? and other related questions

Business Intelligence (BI) — Looking inside our organization. Did we manage to use our reserves wisely? Are there new data gathered so we can use it in the future? A thorough checkup on our staff, tech systems, quarterly financial, and production goals and measures. HR aspects how did our employees get through the crisis? Do we have to recruit new talents? What new skills, capabilities, and training do we have to give our employees? What algorithms did we use, and must use from now-on to analyze our data? How do we evaluate our resilience as a competitor in our market? and some other questions

Knowledge Management (KM) — What had changed in our inter-communication habits? Did we set enough robust knowledge platforms to keep the information of the organization in order, managed, available? Are we prepared for managing and analyzing new data? Does KM technology sufficient? and some other related questions

The third step of the design comes after we had finished the first two steps. We know now what had changed in our strategy during the crisis, and we have analyzed our competitors, customers, technology, resources, and sources. Now it is time to rebuild our Intelligence Core (TIC)™. To do that, we have to start with a very important, if not crucial, measure; Market-Risk. Assessing this measure has always been hard and elusive, particularly for our exit strategy. But, based on our operational experience and financial status now, and our forecast to the next quarter, we can give our best effort educated-guess as for the market risk rate. Combining our assessment of risk with our insights from steps one and two, we can, now, decide on the allocation of resources to each of the four Intelligence pillars and form our Intelligence Core. Moreover, it would be time, also, to plan our Intelligence Projects and implement the Intelligence ROI model to reduce, as much as possible, the chance for waste.

For more about The Intelligence Core (TIC)™ you can read https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-model-intelligence-process-company-amir-el/

For more about the I-ROI, model you can read https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-model-intelligence-roi-i-roi-amir-el/

The fourth and final step of the design refers to the implementation plan of the Intelligence Projects, decided on in step 3. Now that we know what channels do our customers and competitors use and what market change we are facing, it is time to plan the nature of our gathering process, analysis algorithms and methods, and the right knowledge and technology for this mission. Our target remains as it were, help the CEO and decision-makers in the organization to accomplish organizational targets and realize the CEO’s vision. Our plan should categorize and prioritize these basic elements: Primary and Secondary researches, Humint, Observations, External intelligence suppliers, Training, Roadshows, Conferences, Webinars, and strong robust presence in social media platforms.

To sum-up this little discussion let me reiterate the four main steps to take in designing our Intelligence Exit Strategy:

• How did we enter the crisis?!
• Inspect current internal and external surroundings
• Rebuild the Intelligence Core
• Plan and implement Intelligence Projects

(Always at your service https://www.webintelligency.co.il/)