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Knowledge Center

This is our knowledge center. Please browse through our business cases and thought leadership for topics we have covered and interest you. Please note that you DO NOT have to sign up or register to access any of this information.

The "High Thread Count" SWOT: Getting More Value out of a Classic CI Tool

The SWOT--a tool that allows users to focus on the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities posed by their competitors--has been one of the main competitive analysis tools for many years. Its popularity in the business world--which sets it apart from other academically-inspired business analysis methodologies--stems from several things: it's straightforward in its design and easy to construct; it's handy to use; and the results seem clear and actionable. A crisp template that can be easily applied.
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The Lessons of GPS for Competitive Intelligence

Recently, a pair of retired relatives showed up at our house, having driven 2,000 plus miles on what constitutes a substantial road trip for anyone. (Never mind that they were on what turned out to be the first leg of three such jaunts while escaping the winter in their home state!) Looking hale and hearty for two seniors who had just spent four days in the car, we inquired into how the trip went. They both laughed, and told us about the new Global Positioning System device they had bought for Christmas at Wal-Mart, with an eye toward this trip.
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Business Case: A Mexican Food Seasonings and Spices Supplier Targets the US Market

The largest supplier of food seasonings and spices in Mexico was recently faced with a decision about whether or not to try to enter the lucrative US market and if so, how. TLCN identified a lucrative avenue through the specialty ethnic grocery retailer segment that represents $266 million in market potential...
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Eight key characteristics of a high growth sales organization.

There are tremendous pressures on the modern sales organization. Customers are becoming more powerful, more discerning and more demanding, and growth is an enduring theme in all vendor organizations big and small. The last ten years has witnessed more organizational and structural change in sales organizations than in the previous forty.
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Diffusion of consumption lifestyles…Beyond the ethnic markets in US

Developing the entry strategies into US for a Seasonings company presented precisely this dilemma for TLCN. With a predictable mindset, the market opportunity for the seasonings was automatically focused amongst select spice consuming ethnic segments.
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Are you a technology provider? Here’s nine steps to improve your all-important “customer experience.”

Companies with award-winning and cutting edge technologies and products have too often been tripped up in the marketplace by complacent or even mediocre customer service practices. Thunderbird recently completed a project aimed at identifying best practices for managing “the customer experience” among several companies with very high customer service expectations, and nine key attributes emerged....
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Mentoring as a part of the Continuous Learning Journey

Applied learning must be focused on a continuous learning journey. Most people in organizations learn because the organization fosters and encourages learning activity that is applicable to the job, to the future, and to the aspirations of the organization....
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Sales Strategy as a part of Integrated Marketing Communications

The Promotion Mix is the last of the four golden ‘p’s of Marketing planning, preceded by Product, Price, and Place. In the last few years the traditional Promotions Mix articulated as Advertising, Personal Selling, Public Relations and Publicity and Sales Promotion or Promo tools has broadened as routes to market and channels to market have evolved and grown. Sales are now recognized as being a part of the Communications mix used in marketing a product....
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Developing a Global Strategy: Oft Discussed but rarely coordinated or successfully implemented

Nothing divides boards more, nor causes heated arguments amongst senior managers more than the formulation and implementation of global strategy. Strategy is always open to interpretation and opinion, largely around cost, risk and speed of market entry or development. This article highlights the logic and the process that all organizations must do to gain sufficient information and forecasts to enable them to embark upon a Global Strategy. The opinions and the feelings are up to individual teams of decision takers.
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Global Strategy: The Challenges of Leading an Organization into the Global Arena

Every organization must undertake an audit to understand how they can leverage the global market to add value. Once they understand their customers' needs, what all major competitors are doing, and the tangible and intangible assets they already have within the organization, a strategy for developing a Global Organization can be developed. Alongside the development and the execution of the strategy there is always the greatest challenge of all, developing a number of Global Leaders.
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Thinking Global: Today's Organizational Challenges

It really doesn't matter whether your company turns over $5m or $5b, the challenge remains the same; Think Global, or become subsumed by the challenges the new Global Economy is already bringing. This Thought Leadership gives some solid guidelines of how an organization must consider its Strategic Planning Process.
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Global Strategy: Friedman says "The World is Flat," but most organizations think it won't impact their business!

Tom Friedman's book has become a global best seller, but many US businesses refuse to admit that the world he describes will have any more than a minimal impact on them. This article takes some of the themes from the book and describes the impact it could have on a medium-sized construction business working just in Arizona in the booming Valley of the Sun.
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How Consulting Can Best Serve Family-Owned Businesses

While business organizations of all kinds can effectively utilize consulting services for a variety of purposes, family-owned businesses, in particular, seem to use outside consulting mostly for the following needs...
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The Global BI/CI Corner: BI/CI--Putting the "Aim" back into "Ready, Aim, Fire!"

Growing up watching adventure films, I soon had visions of riding steeds, crossing swords, and firing arrows at the villains, just like my on-screen heroes. I didn't have a horse or a fencing master, so I took up archery with visions of one day splitting an arrow in half, just like Robin Hood.
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The Global BI/CI Corner: What does the term, "Business Intelligence" Mean?

I have often been asked, "why do you call your MBA class, 'business intelligence'? I'm confused about what that means." Why is that? Well, since the term is not trademarked, it has come to be used in several ways. It surfaced in the early 1980's in articles from leading external analysis gurus such as Jan Herring, who set up Motorola's internal "CIA," and Ben Gilad, who's first book on external analysis was entitled, "The Business Intelligence System."
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The Global BI/CI Corner: What's the Difference between Market Research and Business and Competitive Intelligence? Learn from how Toys R Us tried to enter Sweden

BI/CI is often still confused with market research. Indeed, several BI/CI experts have addressed the differences, beginning with Ben Gilad in his groundbreaking 1988 book, "The Business Intelligence System," and most recently by CI thought leader Ken Sawka in a 2005 article in Competitive Intelligence Magazine. Intelligence gurus see the differences as largely around scope and timeframe, with market research as a current time-focused, highly quantitative look at markets and customers, while BI/CI is generally more qualitative, more future-oriented, and is focused on other external factors.
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The Global BI/CI Corner: "Six Degrees of Separation," Camp David, and Tom Sawyer

What do the famous play, "Six Degrees of Separation," the US president's famous retreat at Camp David, Maryland, and the quintessential American fictional character Tom Sawyer have in common? Lessons for finding and leveraging key human sources of intelligence, that's what.
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Finding Key Sources of Competitive Intelligence for a Global Consumer Products Manufacturer

DFaced with the merger of its two nearest competitors, a $15 billion global consumer products manufacturer (and worldwide market leader) turned to TLCN for an in-depth assessment of the new company's global manufacturing operations. The competitor was headquartered in North America and in Europe, with the majority of its manufacturing outsourced to factories located in China and South East Asia. The client's key intelligence questions were as follows...
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Building Winning Partnerships Through Collaborative Business Planning

A global networking equipment provider (the company) and a Latin American technology solutions provider (the partner) recently won a $10 million deal from one of the region's largest corporations, and now find themselves in "the pole position" for more such business. How? By pushing their collaboration to a new level through a joint business planning strategy process that they learned at Thunderbird.
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Business and Competitive Intelligence Delivers a Wake-up Call to a Technology Provider

The company, the internal provider of specialized technology to its parent's business units, had recently completed its first truly rigorous strategic planning process. It was beginning to see the potential of a much different future: one in which the parent SBU's might invite competition from outside technology providers and in return, allow the company to compete for business outside the parent.
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