Common Pitfalls
A CI leader’s role is to support the intelligence needs of various cross-functional stakeholders. However, these stakeholders aren’t always proactively included during initial scoping sessions, when the CI program is being designed, intelligence questions are developed, or when decisions are made on the structure and cadence of reports.
Without this early input, the CI program’s workflows and deliverables can feel generic or outdated, often reflecting past approaches rather than the organization’s specific, current needs. As a result, CI outputs may not fully align with strategic priorities in a clear and actionable way.
Gathering input from diverse stakeholders helps to balance priorities effectively.
While the required intelligence may be included in reports, stakeholders might struggle to locate it or apply it to their own initiatives. This often leads to intelligence not being used as intended – or worse, ignored – undermining the ultimate goal of CI, which is to enable stakeholders to easily find the information they need and regularly use it to inform planning and strategic decisions.
CI outputs may not fully align with strategic priorities in a clear and actionable way.
Consider holding small group roundtables. These sessions can be scheduled when a CI program is first established, when the program is renewed at the end of the year, or ideally two to three times a year. These check-ins with cross-functional groups allow CI leaders to ask key questions, such as:
How do you currently use this intelligence, or how would you like to use it throughout the year?
If a specific deliverable structure is proposed, does it meet your needs?
Are there any other common analyses you run on this intelligence that could be proactively incorporated into the deliverable structure to increase its effectiveness?
What optimizations could be made to intelligence gathering or reporting processes to streamline your use of the intelligence and deliver maximum value?
While not every stakeholder’s perspective can be fully incorporated into the CI program due to budget and prioritization constraints, gathering input from diverse stakeholders helps to balance priorities effectively.
Often, when CI programs are established and run year after year, they can become repetitive. This results in stagnant CI program design, where the only noticeable change each year may be competitor tiering, such as ranking five or ten competitors as high, medium, or low threat. Naturally, these rankings shift as new data and market conditions emerge.
Unless you identify and address this issue, it can cause CI program outputs to lose value over time, as they fail to evolve alongside the organization and market dynamics. It is essential to ensure that CI outputs support current and future strategic priorities.
It is essential to ensure that CI outputs support current and future strategic priorities.
CI leaders can work to proactively ensure that brand priorities and their evolution are incorporated into the CI program design. Every year, with each renewal of the program structure, give some attention should to how reports are delivered; how frequently are they released? Which competitors remain top of mind or shift to medium or low priority?
Similarly, as with the previous pitfall, it is important to establish recurring touchpoints with cross-functional stakeholders. As their decisions evolve, you should adapt your CI program accordingly. This approach requires flexibility and a proactive stance in competitive intelligence monitoring.
When working with a team of cross-functional stakeholders, certain groups may be more vocal than others, which can be positive, as it encourages engagement from specific stakeholders. However, the challenge is that more vocal stakeholders may unintentionally receive more prioritization, leading to an unbalanced workflow that favors their needs. A classic case of the squeaky wheel getting the oil.
The danger here is that budget and time can be disproportionately allocated to the louder groups, potentially leaving high-priority initiatives from other stakeholders across the organization underserved.
Budget and time can be disproportionately allocated to the louder groups.
CI leaders should ensure that the brand's top goals remain the central focus throughout the year. Whenever ad-hoc initiatives or new requests arise, they should consider whether each aligns with the organization’s main goals and maintains a focused approach.
For those leading these work streams within pharmaceutical organizations and partnering with an external vendor, you may find it beneficial to seek partners who can help throughout this process, proactively recommending specific methodologies or ad-hoc research initiatives that align with the brand's key business objectives.
Adequate funding of priority business goals is also important, which may involve setting aside part of the ad-hoc budget to support future market research initiatives.
A lack of strategic focus often arises when key intelligence questions (KIQs) aren’t aligned with the business’s needs, and there’s no framework to organize and prioritize these questions.
When KIQs emerge in an ad hoc or fragmented manner from different departments, this could lead to a scenario where CI insights do not fully address key strategic priorities, wasting time and resources on intelligence that lacks impact.
Additionally, without a structured framework to collect and organize KIQs, it can be challenging to balance the necessary depth with the confidence needed in the results, risking insights that are either too shallow or too complex to be actionable. While some intelligence may offer general direction, decision-makers may still lack the confidence to make informed decisions, often due to an incomplete or fragmented view of the information.
A key responsibility of a CI leader is to continually ensure a focus on underlying business needs, while encouraging cross-functional stakeholders to do the same. This involves consolidating all existing intelligence within the institution and aligning it with any ongoing research initiatives.
By taking this approach, the output becomes synchronized and synergistic, helping to align all stakeholders in understanding the ultimate answers to key questions and thereby supporting effective strategic decision-making.
