Individual Report: Structuring Your Monitoring Plan

Answered

Introducing the Selected Company

Here is an additional helping hand to help you structure your individual monitoring plan. I strongly advise you to imagine that you will submit this report to your client and that this draft is given to him or bher to inform him or her of how you will proceed. I am not asking you to consider the logistical aspects of this monitoring plan (costs, assignment of responsibilities, etc.) but you can talk about them briefly. The point is for you to go through the entire process. For each section, I have added elements that should be included or questions to help you build that section.

The length of the text does not include any of the necessary appendices such as your tables or other supporting documents. The important elements of your work will be found in the main text but the appendices will help you capture everything.

Introduce the company of your choice and why it was selected.

For example, why this company could benefit from a competitive intelligence?

What are the strategic objectives of this organization or of the selected company?

Did you speak to someone from that company or did you conduct an analysis to determine what the company objectives might be?

How will you proceed to generate a monitoring plan for them?

Presentation of the strategy elements selected, the hypotheses and the why

What are the three (3) elements of the strategy for which monitoring is desirable (Table A)? KITs

Why? And above all, following what kind of analysis (PESTEL, SWOT, others) or discussion with a

company representative? Tell us a little about it.

Following your analysis, which should be added in appendix, what KITs are derived from it ?

And now, the plan really begins; for these KITs, what are the KIQs and the KII / sources?

To answer this question, use and fill in the tables from A to D and add them as appendices. You will end up with something like this :

*1 table A with your 3 KITs,
*1 table B and C (1 per KIT) - you can combine them but must clearly identify the KIT.

*3 tables D (with 1+ line per KII) - you can combine the tables but you must clearly identify the KIQ.

Discussion on the sources of information selected for each KII (3x3) and why

Alternatively, you could chose to fill out one (1) xls combined table and only have three (3) tables B.Discuss the sources of information selected in your table C (source); Why this source exactly?You don’t want to cover them all but offer some comments on your approach and refer to your tables.Will the information obtained be easy to obtain, will it be white, grey, primary or secondary...?This is a preliminary report, you haven’t done the full CI yet.

A brief overview of what the analysis may reveal

What are your assumptions in Table B and Table D (for each source) suggest?In other words, what do you expect to find in your research?Based on all of your hypotheses, what does the overall situation appear to be for the company?

A brief overview of how the results will be disseminated

Given what information you think you will find, how and to whom will you distribute the results of your analysis?Any comments or recommendations for how the information should be disseminated?Who do you recommend sending it to and what purpose would they have with it?

Other relevant recommendations or observations

Your impressions, recommendations, or observations on the process and on the collection structure you propose.

Of course, an important element is what do you expect your recommendation for the company would be? This would be based on your hypothesis at this point in time given no data is to be collected or analyzed.For example; "I expect to demonstrate that competitor Y is not a threat..." or "I expect to confirm that the technological development of the market is the greatest threat...".