The market and competitive intelligence (M&CI) function within an enterprise delivers the most value to the business when its professionals possess a combination of consulting, communication, and content curation skills. That was one of the recommendations Forrester Principal Analyst Cinny Little shared with attendees at Northern Light’s virtual 2021 Customer Forum on Sept. 30, where she was the featured guest speaker.

Little’s presentation, entitled “Market & Competitive Intelligence: How to Drive More Actions and Value,” was part of a day-long agenda for users of Northern Light SinglePoint™, an enterprise knowledge management platform optimized for competitive intelligence and customer insights.

Little noted in her presentation that the key to deriving business value from market and competitive intelligence is having it acted upon by decision-makers, which, as a practical matter, can be difficult to measure.

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“Our job is not to just gather intel and analyze it, it’s to drive change,” Little quoted one M&CI leader as telling her in an interview. That can necessitate having difficult conversations with senior executives at times, but it’s a critical part of the job, she noted, which is why strong communication skills are a key prerequisite for success in the market and competitive intelligence function.

Little also shared findings of her research into setting M&CI priorities within the enterprise. “You should have 4-6 major initiatives that are mapping to what’s visibly important,” she told the Northern Light conference attendees. “Some will be related to optimizing business as usual; others to innovation, disruptive forces, what’s changing and how to act on that. Always be looking at ‘What does this mean for us?’ and ‘How will we respond to this change?'”

“Know that you’ll need to continuously invest time in changing the way you and stakeholders work,” Little concluded.

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Cinny Little is a Principal Analyst at Forrester, one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. She serves customer insights professionals, covering the skills and ways of working required to build a culture of data activation. She helps market research/consumer intelligence, digital analytics, customer analytics, market and competitive intelligence, and business analyst pros drive more value from their work.

“Having Cinny Little as keynote presenter at our annual Customer Forum was an honor, and her presentation was enlightening and insightful,” Northern Light CEO C. David Seuss said. “Northern Light prides itself on bringing best practices in competitive intelligence to our clients. Cinny is one of the foremost thought leaders in the market and competitive intelligence industry, and our conference attendees very much appreciated her perspective and its relevance to their daily jobs leading M&CI activities at their organizations.”