Introduction to Competitive Intelligence: Process, Applications and Tools

In the world of excessive business competitiveness, almost every company tries to monitor its environment to exceed the competitors. Getting knowledge about competitors is the basic principal of what is called Competitive Intelligence (CI). Many applications of Competitive Intelligence can be used like Opinion Mining and Foresight studies and the process of obtaining such intelligence differs according to the company's needs. In this paper, we will present in more details the definitions of CI and a general process grouping the most used steps in conducting such study. In the end we will present some tools useful in CI.