Workforce Competitive Intelligence™
from Different Angles

Workforce Competitive Intelligence™ (WCI) is a new corporate discipline that builds on and extends traditional competitive intelligence (CI). WCI systematically, proactively and creatively engages your workforce and HR networks to create a vital new source of information and insights about the external environment.

To help paint a clear picture of this multifaceted practice, each page in this "About WCI" section takes a look at Workforce Competitive Intelligence™ from a different point of view.

We start with brief notes introducing WCI to three key groups:

A Word to CEOs and Senior Management

If your company already has a CI function, you know the value of competitive intelligence. Perhaps you even include human capital considerations in frontline corporate activities such as M&A due diligence and pre-deal planning. But you may be overlooking a virtual wellspring of valuable new intelligence if your CI and HR functions remain largely siloed from each other. (And our own research shows that even among top companies with leading-edge talent management practices, these two functions are isolated from each other in more than 60 percent of the cases.)

Workforce Competitive Intelligence™ (WCI) brings CI and HR together to create new synergies that will yield actionable intelligence across the board. You will gain fresh new insights about virtually every strategic and tactical area addressed by traditional CI, plus original intelligence about important HR-related issues like employee retention, competitor talent pools and employer branding.

Additionally, one facet of a wide-ranging WCI program -- a Workforce Information Security Program™ (WISP) -- will show your employees how to protect your company against the CI efforts of your competitors.

RivalScape will help your company set up a proactive, systematic and productive WCI program that will help you sleep better at night knowing your competitive advantage is being secured on all fronts.

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A Word to HR and Talent Leaders

The role of Human Resources has been steadily expanding in recent years, and with the advent of WCI, HR executives can now take a further step toward full participation in top-level corporate decision making.

Back in the old days, the "Personnel Department" was limited to providing transactional and functional services such as payroll, compensation and staffing. Today, the best talent leaders are deeply involved in critical, multi-faceted internal efforts to improve workforce competitiveness. Cutting-edge human capital managers are beginning to look to the external competitive HR landscape to make a value-added contribution to the company's strategic vision and activities.

WCI accelerates this trend by adding substantial new value to the HR function. Talent leaders work closely with CI professionals to systematically tap into your workforce and HR networks to provide actionable competitive intelligence — and not only about important HR concerns, but across the entire spectrum of strategic and tactical business issues.

RivalScape will help you instill a "competitive intelligence mind-set" in your workforce and set up powerful WCI systems and activities that seamlessly integrate into your existing HR practices. And we'll do so with an eye to scoring early wins to help you quickly demonstrate the value of WCI to senior management.

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A Word to CI Professionals

All great CI pros are constantly on the lookout for new sources of ethical intelligence gathering. WCI provides you with precisely that, and right in your own backyard — your company's employees and HR networks.

In addition to providing a rich new vein of competitive knowledge that has been largely overlooked in traditional CI efforts, WCI also broadens the CI perspective to include insightful new ways to look at your competitors through the lens of human capital considerations.

RivalScape will help you multiply your effectiveness as a corporate CI leader by showing you how to partner with HR to build a highly effective WCI program that strengthens your company's competitive posture against its rivals.

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