Key insights
Evalueserve hosted a panel discussion with KPMG to explore how KPMG Turbocharged its Competitive Intelligence Program to assist multiple teams worldwide and enable clients to create better-informed competitor strategies. Richard Strayer, Research Director at KPMG and J.J. Malfettone, Director of Growth and Strategy, KPMG, joined Satyajit Saha, Vice President, Product at Evalueserve to discuss how KPMG has turned insights into action and achieved these results:
- More efficient processes of accessing and disseminating information
- Reduced time to deliver insights using AI/ML led technology solutions
- Increased adoption of competitive intelligence across the firm
- Centralization of CI-related insights across the world
- Benchmarking KPMG’s own thought leadership against 20,000+ industry publications
For further details, please get in touch with ps@evalueserve.com.
Some key takeaways from the discussion
Competitive Intelligence (CI) Challenges
- “The biggest challenge is budget, talent acquisition, and the amount of data to deal with. Also, wrapping leadership’s head around the concept that CI can contribute to forward-looking activities has always been a struggle.”
- “A challenge for CI professionals will be the evolution of different types of technologies. For example, the Metaverse is a platform that is rapidly being adopted by several PS firms to both promote their services and run business, and this raises questions as to whether the existing suite of competitive intelligence tools will be able to collect information from this type of data sources.”
Role of Technology in CI – Leveraging AI and ML for Real-time and Actionable Insights
- “Technologies like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence will be leveraged extensively to create taxonomies based on what’s relevant to a firm versus other firms and categorize it a lot faster. As a result, this will allow CI professionals to spend more time on the strategy side and not on the nuances of data aggregation and cleansing.”
- “CI supports several functions; it’s used not only in making border decisions about investments but also in understanding clients. That’s where we see the real power of AI-driven technologies – it enables you to address multiple functional areas in which one may not have personal expertise.”
- “Technology is a force multiplier because no organization can have a large enough team to have specialists in every single discipline a company may be involved in, and that’s one crucial impact we deliver.”
- “An AI-driven technology platform for CI is extremely relevant when you have multiple stakeholders, as it allows people to self-serve as needed. It’s never going to be 100 percent, but if you can get them 70-80% of the way there with an automated solution, then that’s a win”
- “An AI-driven solution can help constantly scan competitor’s websites, news sources, and analyst reports (both equity analysts and our professional services analysts). It also looks at competitive marketing spending, LinkedIn data, hiring trends, and skill sets within the competitors.”
- “CI professionals can’t handle every question that every stakeholder or internal client may have. A tiered approach can help, where there is some self-service information made available directly to the end-users through the platform, and for more complex projects from leadership or time-sensitive requests, CI team can deliver additional value.”
Importance and Role of CI and CI Professionals (Human in the loop)
- “People implementing the technology might not necessarily have the business context. On the other hand, stakeholders don’t have the time to engage at all levels, so the CI teams must be embedded from the beginning. This helps them have a clear vision of the strategy and eventually guide the production of the final outputs. Hence there’s a requirement for the CI team or ‘Human in the loop’ across the value chain.”
- “Technology does a fantastic job of aggregating data from several different sources, creating taxonomies, and organizing it, making the CI process easier for us. But technology doesn’t have the context of a firm; it doesn’t understand the firm’s internal dynamics and the market. So, that’s where CI professionals come in the loop (Human in the loop) – to understand the information better, filter it, and provide actionable insights to the leadership.”
Combining Leading and Lagging Indicators for an Effective CI strategy
- “CI is a lagging indicator and not a leading indicator – it means it has already happened, and you’re behind your competitors. If your strategy is to be first to market and to be the innovator in the market, then CI alone will not help you – that is the biggest challenge.”
- “Human intelligence or anecdotal indicators are leading indicators – talking with SMEs, futurists, and people within an industry who have robust predictions around their industry.”
- “Venture Capital (VC) data is the best and most comprehensive data around leading indicators. Aggregating VC data: where is the VC money flowing, in what sort of technologies, which industries, and what services, can all be leading indicators. What VCs are investing in today will likely be relevant in the coming five-to-seven-year range.”
CI Impact
- “In terms of impact, CI is the number one piece of intelligence that our management committee acts upon.”
- “The most significant impact is on decision-making at the strategic level – where are we going to invest, what are the services that will resonate with our clients, and how do we ensure we are delivering the value that our clients and prospects are looking for. CI Professionals are now a voice in the decision-making process – reassuring leaders that they are making the right decisions backed by necessary data points. Also, there’s been a fundamental shift over the last five years – leadership now demands more data-driven choices – they want to view a lot of competitive intelligence for decision making.”
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