- ISR Intelligence Solutions announces the launch of its signature intelligence services for business
- In an ever increasingly connected and volatile world, it is vitally important to stay informed
- Our Intelligence products are customized to your needs
- We offer varrying degrees of depth and customization to fit your budget and needs
- If you don't have an intelligence section, this is a great affordable option to conducting it in house
- Stay informed to stay ahead
- If you don't know your competitor, maybe you should
- Keeping informed of strategic world events can help your business take advantage of opportunity and avoid threats
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ISR Intelligence Solutions, LLC is now accepting a limited number of applicants for a beta test of its specialized open source B2B strategic intelligence services, as well as a beta test of its B2B competitive intelligence services. The ideal candidates are the decision makers of start ups and small to medium sized US businesses for the beta trial. Our beta test products are free, will run for a limited time, and there is no obligation to purchase the service. All we ask is for your feed back on the quality of the products and services and how we can improve them before we launch them as an official service. If interested in taking advantage of this offer, and to see if this service is right for you, mailto:[email protected] and indicate which service you are interested in for further details. We are only accepting a limited number of applicants because we want to ensure the highest quality possible as we beta test our service.
As a senior leader, or a manager, what keeps you awake at night? Is there something that you feel you don't know enough about, whether it be about your own internal metrics, your market, your customers, your business area, the future, or your competition. It is important to ensure that you have as complete a picture as possible so that you can make the best informed decisions. There is a constant struggle to stay on top of information, and the pace of change, that which is referred to as creative destruction, is exponentially gaining pace. How do you manage your information needs, if at all?
In my personal opinion, there are several categories of information and intelligence that must be regularly updated in order to keep an organization well informed so that senior leaders can make plans to shift strategy in anticipation of changes. It is not a matter of if, but a matter of when something will change, that will dramatically impact your organization, for better or for worse. 1. Business Intelligence - has become something more like an automated dashboard used to monitor a businesses bottom line. Necessary to keep track of a company's internal metrics, and maximize the bottom line. However, if not conducted correctly, misinformation can feed the company's real time dash board. 2. Market Intelligence - Keeping track of trends in your market or your niche, keeps you in touch with your customers, and also what your competitors customers needs and desires. We need to look at the macro and the micro levels in order to fully understand your company's position in the market, and if there is opportunity for growth or not. If there is opportunity, how to best take advantage before your competitor does. Knowing what the customer needs or desires, and how to get it to them and maintain a profit is the key. Understanding the market and sector in which you intend to concentrate your marketing, advertising and sales efforts is essential to turning leads into sales. 3. Geographic Intelligence - Understanding your business area of operations and business area of interest is essential. Every company must think globally today due to ever increasing volatility, and any company is potentially impacted by the ever increasing global interconnectivity. Geographic intelligence covers more than just your customers. It covers the geography of your area of operations and the impact of weather on that geography. It covers your suppliers, your supply lines and their routes. Being familiar with the potential impact of goods or services to your company by a disruption in your geographic supply lines, or situations within areas than influence sources of raw material that feed the main supplier of your subcomponents is essential. Dare I say, this is vital. Knowing the truth of the climate of the area of operations and the area of interest enables the anticipation of disruptions, and the planning of contingencies. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can really help a company understand the relevance of big data, or the big picture in order to make the best decisions possible. The use of GIS is only limited by the imagination of the user or the requester of information. 4. Cultural Intelligence - I have separated this into a separate category from Market Intelligence for the same reason that I separated Geographic Intelligence. You need to really understand the cultures and beliefs of the people your company is dealing with, and/or the cultures and beliefs of the countries that your supply lines run through, or cultures that are close enough to your supply lines or sources of raw materials to impact your company. These cultural differences can be drastic when going global, and can be the difference between success and failure for a company. 5. Competitive Intelligence - Knowing who your competitor is and what they are doing. Putting a face or faces to the competition. This includes everything about their companies, their management, psychological profiles, are they aggressive or timid. What is the life cycle of their products? Do they have a discernible and predictable innovative pace? Where are there supply lines? Are there weaknesses or potential weaknesses to their main suppliers? From a military perspective, we utilize order of battle analysis in order to determine an enemy's strength's, weaknesses, and most likely and most dangerous courses of action. The same model can and should be applied to your competitors in order to truly understand their capabilities, and predict their viable courses of action. 6. Political Intelligence - Understanding political history, current politics and situations which may impact future politics, and therefore, possibly your business. Changes in politics can result in increased taxes or tariffs on products. These changes can happen with little or no warning, especially as political tensions rise. Understanding how business is conducted in a foreign county is of utmost importance. In some countries, corruption is rampant. 7. Information Intelligence - Simply stated, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of information capability in a nation in which you are conducting or plan to conduct business. For example, how do the people in a particular country get their information and how old is it? Is the information censored by the State in any way? Being able to discern truth from propaganda is a powerful tool. This can also bring a reality check to your marketing and advertising sections. 8. Military Intelligence - While understanding a military's capability and intent may seem like it is out of the realm of business, in my opinion, it is very important. The military is ultimately a nation's hammer, and normally used when political efforts fail. In many countries corruption extends to the military. Nothing is more indicative of a country's intent and pending actions than what they are doing with their military. 9. Economic Intelligence - This one requires no explanation. Understanding the economic conditions, forecasts, capabilities and intentions of a country is absolutely key to determining if conducting business in a country is beneficial or not. Looking at both the micro and macro levels are important in order to predict the impact of conducting business in any country. 10. Operational or Regional Intelligence- Almost at the strategic level, but one step removed. Operational or regional intelligence is very important in understanding the potential benefits and risk to your business, especially if it is global. This are of intelligence analyzes regions, and as the name suggests, seeks to understand the cultural, political, information, military and economic realities that exist between countries that are neighbors or near neighbors. Are there trade pacts, embargo, or tariffs between countries of a region? What are the logistics lines of communication between countries and regions? 11. Strategic Intelligence - The big picture, the strategic forecasts, the crystal ball, the think tanks that sometimes get it right, and sometimes get it wrong. The bottom line is that we need to keep up with what the future predictions are at the strategic level, and plan accordingly in order to be in a position to maximize your company's opportunity and minimize its risks. The bottom line is that for a company to be truly informed, it takes a full time effort by real intelligence professionals to ensure the organization has the most recent and relevant information and intelligence to ensure that it is fully informed, and can make informed decisions, as well as contingency plans in an ever increasingly volatile world. Sincerely, The ISR Analytical Team Below is a post from ISR Intelligence Solutions Facebook Page. This is a great example of the utilization of GIS to depict the locations and density of a certain business. This is excellent work, but with a little further analysis, this can be used as a very powerful Competitive Intelligence Product for this Industry. This is an example of the type of analysis ISR can provide for your company.
We are pleased to announce that ISR Intelligence Solutions, LLC is now a licensed private detective agency in the State of New Jersey. We support attorneys, law firms, insurance companies and individuals with various types of private investigative support. We look forward to providing the best possible investigative service to our clients. We will be re-organizing and soon posting some really interesting things about private investigations in New Jersey.
"Opportunity often comes crashing over the bow" is a famous quote by Peter Drucker. During times of uncertainty, when a business opportunity of a lifetime comes crashing over the bow, how do you evaluate the opportunity, and the your ability to react fast enough to turn the opportunity into a viable business? Do you go with a your instincts, or do you evaluate the opportunity in a systematic and complete approach to ensure that you don't overlook and mitigate the threats to the business opportunity? A unified and consolidated intelligence effort can quickly help you determine if the opportunity is a viable one, whose opportunity is worth the risk and expenditure of funds.
Our company specializes in competitive intelligence, market intelligence, and strategic assessments. We utilize multiple processes and systems to produce a customized, multi-disciplined product for our client. We are intelligence specialists and can conduct Ad hoc intelligence at your discretion on unique topics. We help to "enable informed decisions". When opportunity crashes over the bow, and you need immediate intelligence support so that you can fully understand the opportunity, the environment, the weaknesses and the threats - we are here to help. Whether it's providing an intelligence capability that your company lacks, or augmenting and existing capability to increase turn around time, we are here to help. Robert D. Jenkins "If you know your enemy and yourself, and you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles" - Sun Tzu
This famous quote, is as accurate today as it was thousands of years ago. This statement is as applicable to business as it is to warfare. As a business, you probably know yourself and the industry very well. (or at least you should - your strengths and your weaknesses) You should have very good situational awareness and understanding of the terrain and climate of the area in which you seek to conduct business (or do battle so to speak). Understanding your enemy, or competitor, is the key to making fully informed decisions that will have the maximum effectiveness for your business. When conducting intelligence, it is important to maintain your eyes on the key internal indicators that make your business effective and profitable. However, a multi-disciplined intelligence initiative can help to clear the uncertainty that exists in the business area, and provide a solid foundation for near term and strategic plans. Business is like warfare, filled with uncertainty, with a fluid and very dynamic battlefield, that is constantly changing. Maintaining situational awareness of all the factors that can create risk or opportunity, is the key to seizing the initiative and exploiting opportunity while minimizing risk. Robert Jenkins |
AuthorRobert D. Jenkins Archives
June 2016
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