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Competitive Intelligence: Creating a Culture of Intelligence
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.
While I find my role extremely energizing, there are times when I've felt lonely, or in need of a sanity check. I manage this by developing strong relationships with colleagues (current and former) and vendors and calling on them in times of need. Sometimes it is to brainstorm a concept, talk through a search strategy, or ask for advice. Sometimes it is purely as a quality check to ensure I've dotted all my I's and crossed all my T's (I'm talking to you, private company information).
During these times of increased workload, I go back to my foundations and revisit the fundamentals: what is the exact nature of the request, who is it ultimately for, what level of information is required and in what format, and what is the deadline? I ask myself whether I can add value to the request — what's the best and most valuable use of my time? If I can't answer these questions, I say no to the request, but I don't leave my client high and dry. This is my opportunity to build a CI culture and encourage a crowdsourced approach to finding an answer.
|Create an Intelligence Culture
What does it mean to build a CI culture at your firm? As I frequently say, intelligence comes when external market data is analyzed and combined with internal law firm knowledge. Without negating the skills CI professionals bring to their roles, there are tools and resources available to lawyers that they can use to create their own intelligence.
External Tools: Today, many lawyers are well acquainted with resources such as Westlaw and LexisNexis and want to be in control of their own research methods. Vendors such as these provide regular training to lawyers on how to use their services. Going through the process of doing their own research can be beneficial to lawyers in a number of ways:
- Doing their own initial search can help lawyers formulate their actual request; understand what they can find on their own, as well as what the library and other tools can help them with; and recognize where their gaps are. It also helps them understand when to make the best use of their time and when to make the best use of my time.
- It gets them up to speed faster on the day-to-day operations of their clients, which is what clients are crying out for. Lawyers can set alerts, make use of company/investor presentations, read SEC filings, etc.
- CI professionals can concentrate on their own value-added projects. If anything, this process of understanding on all sides also reinforces a CI brand.
Internal Tools: Firms are at different stages of sophistication in connection with developing and using internal tools, though all firms have some sort of internal information available to lawyers. Firms are also implementing collaboration tools to facilitate knowledge sharing within and across practice groups and offices. Encouraging lawyers to seek out those internal tools and the information therein, and combining that with the data found on external tools, is where the cultural change happens.
Seeking out key client relationships, engaging in client feedback programs, being involved with client development strategies, identifying a legal service client is in need of, etc. are steps lawyers can take to become more valuable to their clients. When lawyers introduce colleagues to clients with a specific purpose in mind, it will eliminate the client feeling like they are being 'cross-sold' to for no good reason. All of this combines to create a culture of intelligence — what can I learn about my client and how can I use this to build insight?
|Don't Go It Alone
As firms strive to differentiate themselves and invest more resources in doing so, it's only natural that CI requests will continue to increase. Embrace the ability to create a culture of intelligence, promote end-user tools, and heighten awareness of clean internal data and the benefits to be gained from contributing to data collection efforts.
Introduce your clients to colleagues that can help them. There's no need for you to go it alone and to try to be all things to all people. It's not possible, and it's not practical. Educate your clients to do what they can on their own and consult with you when they understand where you can add value. Create a visible firm presence and get involved in projects where you can make a meaningful contribution. Remind yourself that people usually ask you for what they think you can get for them, not necessarily what they really want. Showcase your skills and let people know what you can do.
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Patricia Ellard is a competitive intelligence professional, with more than 20 years of experience in a top-three global management consulting firm and in global law firms.
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