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Competitive Intelligence: Creating a Culture of Intelligence

By Patricia Ellard
March 01, 2019

 

We constantly hear from clients that they want us to know their business and anticipate their needs, to help them to see around corners. We hear about the ongoing cost pressures clients face, which force in-house counsel to do more with less, and the pressures on outside counsel to provide greater efficiencies and cost predictability. We also hear that clients hate to be cross-sold. However, this does not mean that clients are not interested to be introduced to new colleagues who can provide insight.

Rather, cross selling must be thoughtful and tailored to clients' needs — a concept many of you will recognize from Heidi Gardner's work and the success to be gained from Smart Collaboration strategies.

How Are Law Firms Reacting?

Law firms are listening and implementing strategies to understand clients and their varied needs better. In addition to adopting new technologies to increase efficiency and provide transparency, law firms are increasing their investment in business development and competitive intelligence. In a recent study, Acritas and The Tilt Institute found that law firms with highly effective competitive intelligence (CI) functions perform better than their peers over time. The study also showed that, while more than 80% of law firms had resources dedicated to CI, only 52% had a dedicated, formal function. To me, that says demand is outweighing supply. I am seeing an uptick in requests coming through my door.

Crowdsourcing Resources

If your CI department is similar to mine, the strategies being implemented are generating more research requests than ever. In times like these, I understand feeling overwhelmed and somewhat lonely. I have been working in CI for a long time, and, in my experience, competitive intelligence departments are usually lone practitioners or part of a very small team.

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