An Overview of Information Tools and Technologies for Competitive Intelligence Building: Theoretical Approach

Abstract

The paper refers to the Competitive Intelligence (CI) that is an important area of study for both practitioners and researches. CI is a subset of Business Intelligence (BI), providing balanced pic-ture of the environment to the decision makers. It concerns the collecting and analyzing of the information about the behaviors of the various markets' actors in order to make certain decisions based on market trends. This type of information is mainly semi-structured or unstructured na-ture-in contrast to the well-structured information used in BI. It turns out that many previous in-formation tools used to build BI are insufficient and adequate for CI. The research study is mainly exploratory and descriptive in nature, with the objective of provid-ing an overview of the issue of CI and investigating the various information tools and technolo-gies for CI building. The structure of this paper is organized as follows. Firstly, the idea of CI is explained and the most important differences between BI and CI are highlighted. Next, the most significant infor-mation tools and technologies for building CI are preceded. Finally, some guidelines and recom-mendations are provided in order to build CI in organizations. Some limitations of this research are indicated as well. What is more, further studies on CI are outlined. The paper provides some valuable information on using different information tools and technolo-gies for CI building. The results of this study may be useful for ICT specialists, as well as for the organizations that plan to build CI.