05 Mar 2013|Noida | Amity University Campus, Sector – 125, Noida
Amity Institute of Competitive Intelligence and Strategic Management organises Conference titled “Competitive Intelligence is the Future: Intelligence drives success”
Amity Institute of Competitive Intelligence and Strategic Management organized its first of the kind Conference titled “Competitive Intelligence is the Future: Intelligence drives success” at Amity University Campus, Sector – 125, Noida.
The conference aimed to stimulate curiosity and bring together academicians, researchers, industry representatives, practitioners and students to share their experiences and highlight the need and value of Competitive Intelligence (CI) in today’s business environment.
The conference was inaugurated by Mr Niraj Prakash, Director – Solution Consulting, Oracle India; Mr. Saumitro Sen, Director – Cain Technologies; Ms. Shalini Chakravorty, Country Manager – Hill & Associates (India) Pvt. Ltd.; Mr. Arun Jethmalani, Founder – Value Notes Database Pvt. Ltd; Dr. Ashok K Chauhan- Founder President, Amity Group; Maj. Gen. K. Jai Singh- Group Vice Chancellor, Amity University and Dr. Sanjay Srivastava, Dean – Faculty of Management Studies, Amity University
Welcoming the august gathering, Maj. Gen Ashok Krishna- Director, Amity Institute of Competitive Intelligence and Strategic Management (AICISM) said that ancient India was way ahead in Competitive Intelligence (CI). Chandragupta Maurya was the first emperor of India, ably assisted by his first Minister Chanakya, who practiced CI. At that time India commanded 33% of world trade. Soon the thinking of Chanakya was forgotten and a big country was conquered by people of small countries for more than 2,000 years. Today our share of world market is only 1-2%. In every sphere, lack of intelligence has been felt. Maj. Gen Krishna added that CI is not limited to business only rather it extends to science, law, medicine etc.
Dwelling on the topic ‘Time to Intelligence determines Time to Market”, Mr Niraj Prakash, Director – Solutions Consulting, Oracle India said that need & importance of intelligence and power of information is same. Core fundamental issue about information is its timeliness; if information is not timely it is useless. Mr. Prakash said that it is not about working hard particularly in terms of intelligence and information but how you leverage on intelligence, that makes the difference. While citing the example of Microsoft, Mr. Prakash added that late movers with specific strategic intelligence inputs may succeed in the business. He said that Microsoft was late mover of cloud technology and entered the cloud business in early 2010. Now Microsoft is a leader in offering enterprise cloud solutions. Mr. Prakash said that timeliness and decision to enter market will vary depending on the information received about the market. Mr. Prakash said that there are three big challenges in collection and dissemination of information:
1. Big data phenomenon – receiving of data from multiple sources like web, devices, RFID etc and large part of data is unstructured.
2. Ignoring the in-house data – almost 80% of critical data lies in-house.
3. Resistance to sharing syndrome – users are not ready to share data
Mr. Prakash added that there are new technologies coming which can extract information from all sources like email, files and store it for further analysis.
Attributing 95% of his success to Competitive Intelligence (CI), Dr. Ashok K Chauhan- Founder President, Amity Group said that with the continuous practice of CI, organizations can achieve everything their top leadership aspires for. He averred that no theory or teaching can supersede the implementation of CI. Elaborating on CI, Dr Chauhan added that referring to CI as some form of criminal activity, espionage, spying or something mystical would be a pure misconception. CI is a strategic discipline which helps gathering knowledge about the business environment that results in action.
Sharing his thoughts on “Competitive Intelligence a subject to Forecast the Future World of Facilities”, Mr. Saumitro Sen, Director – Cain Technologies said that global business map today depicts different business culture and it can be divided into 7 business cultures adopted by North America, Latin America, Middle East, Russia, Europe, East Asia and Australia. While predicting the future business scenario, Mr. Sen said there will be change in consumer behavior; people will look out for superfluous life. By year 2030 Eastern giants will continue to grow and wealth balance will tilt towards India and China. Mr Sen added that doing business in 2030 will be completely different with information data flowing into hexabytes in office less and carbonless companies.
Mr. Arun Jethmalani, Founder – Value Notes Database Pvt. Ltd shared his views on “Competitive Intelligence in Uncertain Times. Mr. Jethmalan said that at present we are living in very uncertain time. There is near recession in Europe, Problems in USA, near drying out of investments in India. Mr. Jethmalan added that when market share is shrinking and profits are losing then first thing a company does is to cut its cost. One of the easiest cost cutting is in the area of research and Competitive Intelligence. As professionals of Competitive Intelligence, we have not been able to convince the policy makers of company that what kind of ROI (Return on Investment) we can provide. We have to show the value of our work and to show intangible business gain we can give to the business.
During the various sessions that followed the inauguration CI experts share their views on myriad topics related to the field including Ms Priyam Pandey, HR Executive, KPMG Gurgaon on “Impact of Competitive Intelligence on Indian Pvt. Banks”, Dr M. Natarajan, Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR-NISCAIR, New Delhi on “Exploring Competitive Intelligence”, Dr. Ngboawaji Daniel Nte, Dept. of Social Studies, Ignatius Ajur University of Education, Nigeria on “Competitive Intelligence and SME’s in Nigeria”; Ms. Claudia De Lima Cheron, Professor, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil on “Brazilian International Competitiveness: An exploratory study of public policies supporting internationalization of their enterprises” and others shared their views with the participants and delegates.
Over 37 Research papers and abstract on Competitive Intelligence from all over the world including Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico and India were presented during the Conference.