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Maria Ioia
I got into Competitor Intelligence after working in Market Research for most of my career, both client and agency side. I was one day introduced to a Competitor Intelligence person and thought wow!...view moreI got into Competitor Intelligence after working in Market Research for most of my career, both client and agency side. I was one day introduced to a Competitor Intelligence person and thought wow! I need to know more about that. I never had intended on actually working as one let alone establishing and heading up a Competitor Insights department for a very large organisation. On another level I remember thinking that I always wanted to have more time to enjoy a good coffee in the morning and read a variety of newspapers, something I rarely did as I typically plunged myself into my work. This role gave me the ability to take that time in the morning enjoy my café latte and read up on the global economy, government initiatives, markets, competitors and consumer behaviour – all being integral to what I had set out to do.
At the time I was completing my Executive MBA and became even more interested in strategic competitor intelligence and optimising executive decision making. When the opportunity therefore, came up, I remember grabbing it with both hands. I didn’t give a thought about the fact that I would no longer have weekends away from work and study or that I would need to ‘burn the candle at both ends’ to make this work. I worked hard to influence not only senior stakeholders (and there were many) but also to influence and engage thousands of sales representatives and their managers in seeing the value in this emerging team and to support and even contribute to its success.
What I discovered on this journey (and others since then) is that bringing Competitor Intelligence into an organisation is not about bringing in a new support function such as finance, HR even Market Research. It meant educating staff of its benefits, constantly justifying why it should exist and gain acceptance. In short it was a cultural change management experience as well. Something that can take years to become ingrained in an organisation, however, I had less than a year to establish its worth.view less