Strategic monitoring: why is it essential to organize it well?
A little history…
In 2008, traditional taxi companies did not detect in the development of smartphone applications, a potential threat which a few months later would take the name of... Uber, and introduce a real breakthrough in urban passenger transport.
Who knows if the most agile among them would not then have been able to transform the threat into an opportunity, create their own platform and take the turn towards these new technologies more quickly and thus better resist this new competition... Or even kill it in the first place. 'egg.
By focusing too much on their own field of activity and without an effective strategic monitoring system, most of the large taxi companies simply found themselves unable to anticipate a threat which, as is more and more often the case all fields combined, came from a very distant technological (or economic) universe.
As this example illustrates, the challenge of strategic monitoring consists of detecting a new form of competition or the development of a promising technology early enough , in order to allow the deployment of an action plan (or response plan). ), with a view to maintaining or strengthening its competitive advantages. The threat identified in time also most often takes the form of a potential opportunity.
Weak signal: how not to miss it in your strategic monitoring?
In itself, a weak signal is neither positive nor negative . It's just information. Most often insignificant and barely audible to most individuals. It takes on its full importance when it intersects with other information, or when it is amplified under the effect of intuition or the curiosity of an observer or a working group. (“Did you say working group?” Yes, we’ll talk about it again…)
Detected in time, the weak signal can open the way to real strategic opportunities. Conversely, if we do not identify it in time or do not draw the right conclusions, the same weak signal can hide a threat, because we allow a competitor to seize it.
Strategic monitoring: 360° or more?
Strategic monitoring is a composite monitoring. It brings together all the monitoring that must be organized at the heart of an organization: competition, market, regulation, geopolitics, etc.
Business intelligence is also multidimensional, in the sense that the depth and precision of the information expected can vary enormously from one subject to another..
This organization can be complex. Faced with the multiplicity of issues, fields to monitor, but also internal clients who do not expect the same deliverables... We can quickly get lost along the way, or even worse produce a bunch of reports, flows and tables... that no one reads.
Sometimes very focused and precise, sometimes more diffuse and removed from the daily life of the company, strategic monitoring must allow the various decision-makers to make medium or long-term decisions, based on a “Probability” Vs “Impact” or “Imminence” Vs “Risks”.
Without mentioning the “compliance” aspects, the major difficulty of a strategic monitoring unit consists of carrying out broad and superficial monitoring on the one hand (for example on macro trends), with millimetric monitoring on the other. (for example on competition). And in addition to having to regularly carry out frequent surveys – deep dives – to deepen a detected signal.
Without a monitoring plan reviewed very regularly, your monitoring unit could quickly get lost…
Likewise, it is necessary to carry out RETEX on situations where information deemed important a posteriori was detected too late. Or when information has been disseminated, but it has not triggered a reaction or a particular alarm signal. The diagnosis and resulting action plans will undoubtedly not be the same. This may sometimes involve reviewing the scope of a watch and in other cases adapting the methods of dissemination and strategic enrichment of the results of the watch.
Some components of strategic monitoring
This is indeed surveillance across the entire scope of the company's radar. But the precision sought will not be the same for monitoring competitors (of their product pipes, their patent filings), as for following the news of start-ups (emergence, fundraising, POC, partnerships, etc.) or even for follow mega trends such as inflation, climate change, geopolitical or sociological developments, etc.
We will not cite them all in this article, but among the essentials of strategic monitoring we will think primarily of:
Competitive intelligence: direct… and indirect
This is the most instinctive type of monitoring: closely monitoring production techniques, product or project pipelines, acquisitions, patent filings, etc. What new products/services are your competitors preparing to release? What technologies is their R&D department working on? Who are their new academic partners, the theses they finance, the collaborative projects in which they take part?
From a “competition” perspective, your strategic monitoring work must allow you to answer all these questions.
Market monitoring and long-term trends
Beyond classic competitive intelligence, good strategic intelligence must know how to go beyond its area of expertise.
Mega trends (or critical invariants for some)
It's not just a matter of smelling the air of the times to anticipate the next big trends.
Above all, it is about identifying scenarios, categorizing them in a matrix (for example: Probability Vs Impact on the company's performance) and launching as many sectoral or thematic analyzes ("deep dive"), what needs.
This monitoring aims to fuel strategic prospective .
It consists of choosing themes, major areas of monitoring, rather global in scope, but which could ultimately have an impact on the company and its economic model . They are not intended to try to predict the future. But this is indeed a forward-looking exercise. They can be enriched with various works, such as those proposed by Ariel Kyrou in Les imaginaries du futur , which asks us the question of the future through works of science fiction.
Here are some examples of monitoring of this type:
- For example, keeping an eye on the latest innovations specific to the metaverse . If its use were to develop, it could indeed be appropriate for a cosmetics brand to have our avatars test their foundations, eye shadows and other lipsticks. And if technology made it possible to add an olfactory dimension to the metaverse, a perfume brand would have every interest in ensuring that its perfumes are the first to be able to be smelled “digitally”.
- Another example in the field of cosmetics, the questioning of gender stereotypes in recent years has constituted a weak signal allowing brands to offer new proposals for makeup products.
- In a completely different area, the inflation experienced by our economies can also be considered as a determining long-term monitoring subject . The rise in prices, if it is sustainable (and it is probable), could in fact profoundly transform consumption habits, giving rise to new modes of consumption, communication, travel, banking practices, etc.
- Climate change is also one of these major trends capable of disrupting the economy at all levels. Note in this regard that for the first time in 2021, the CIA's annual threat report (Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World)
The start-up watch
The example of Uber and taxis shows this well: you do not operate in a vacuum, and innovation from a sector completely different from yours can have strong repercussions on your business . For example, the discovery by a biochemical start-up of new catalysts to transform CO2 into formic acid – a molecule used in fuel cells – can be decisive for a company in the automobile industry.
Do you have a list of start-ups or SMEs with high potential for your business?
As well as effective monitoring of the genesis of new start-ups (accelerators, incubators, fundraising, etc.)?
If so, how often do you update their information? The question is not trivial, because you will potentially find yourself managing a mass of diverse and varied information whose relevance rate can sometimes drop below 10%…. It's better to have a solid method and tools before you start or acquire an online base.
Norms and standards, competition, digital developments, societal changes, economic groundswells… The whole challenge of strategic monitoring consists of not being scattered, or conversely, remaining blind to entire sections of your environment. To do this, it is appropriate to think about the organization of your strategic monitoring. This work should ideally be organized by an ad hoc unit, which will lead the network of thematic monitors (science, competitors, standards and regulations, social law, etc.) and establish a global monitoring plan.
To best carry out this strategic monitoring work, you need tools allowing you to cover the different scopes previously described. Patents, scientific articles, collaborative projects, theses, web articles... TKM Software is multi-source monitoring software, allowing you to monitor all the desired areas, without getting lost in the mass of existing information . Thanks to our tool, you will be able to classify, detect and comment on each piece of information, to give you all the means to avoid missing a decisive weak signal. Would you like to know more?
