References to intelligence organizations often conjure up images of spies and secret agents, carrying out clandestine operations in far-off lands. However, "corporate intelligence" is distinct from espionage and is a growing field designed to help businesses mitigate risks, make better decisions, and identify opportunities. Corporate intelligence organizations are indispensable in the modern business environment.
What is Corporate Intelligence?
Corporate intelligence is a specialized form of business intelligence that centers on internal operations of a corporation or other business entity and their relation to external factors in the marketplace, global economy, and physical environment. It is the focused collection and analysis of facts and other information that responds to the needs of decision-makers and key advisors facing strategic challenges in a rapidly changing environment. In its most basic form, corporate intelligence is the collection, processing and analysis of disparate information that can be used to help a company protect its people and assets, gain an edge over its competitors and identify new markets or market opportunities.
Why is it important?
Corporate intelligence provides decision-makers with the information they need to make decisions in a timely manner. Good corporate intelligence ensures that the right information reaches the right people at the right time, allowing them to make the best possible decisions for the company. Enabling shorter decision cycles with improved clarity of information results in competitive advantage. It also provides management with greater insight into the market and its dynamics, thereby enabling them to make more informed decisions.
How does corporate intelligence work?
The Global Intelligence and Protection Center is an innovative model that serves as a blueprint for other companies that want to incorporate intelligence fusion into their business
Corporate intelligence involves identifying relevant information from a wide variety of sources, assessing it and presenting it in an actionable format. Ideally, a corporate intelligence center is a fusion of information from a company’s business operations and various functions with situational awareness from a global, regional and local perspective. The information is then presented in an organized manner that allows managers and decision makers to make effective business decisions quickly. Corporate intelligence centers ideally draw from a range of expertise and experience, including from internal stakeholders, such as supply chain, government affairs, public affairs, environmental health, operations and others. Leveraging available corporate expertise together with intelligence analysis and forecasting methodologies enables both robust and relevant intelligence support to business operations.
A corporate intelligence center is a physical or virtual center of knowledge concentrating expertise and resources to identify and analyze issues impacting the corporation and support strategy development for their resolution. It can also be a key node in a corporation's crisis management team or construct, often serving as an information hub during crisis management or crisis recovery activities.
Dow's Global Intelligence and Protection Center
At Dow, these principles have been combined to create the Global Intelligence and Protection Center, a cutting-edge intelligence fusion center focused upon providing decision-advantage to Dow Leaders worldwide. The center helps Dow leaders confidently understand and anticipate business risks in order to make better decisions and enhance shareholder value, as well as to detect and react to all manner of threats in order to keep Dow employees safe. This is accomplished by fusing relevant internal and external data with analytics and advanced visualization tools to enable an integrated view of risk across the company.
A cornerstone of the Global Intelligence and Protection Center is the Global Security Operations Center, which operations 24/7 and is staffed by 8 analysts who employ technology, visualization and analysis to produce a wide range of products designed to facilitate rapid and accurate assessment of risks and opportunities. These products include product-specific risk assessments; country and regional security assessments; and trade situation reports for key markets around the world. The Center also works with business units at Dow to develop customized reports that integrate industry-specific data and help identify potential threats and business opportunities across the globe.
Modern corporations must be increasingly aware of all forms of risk, including cybersecurity, physical security, process safety, regulatory compliance, manmade/natural disasters and reputational risk. In addition, companies must take steps to effectively mitigate these risks before they become problems. At Dow, the Global Intelligence and Protection Center tackles these challenges head on, delivering actionable intelligence and mitigating risk throughout the organization. The Global Intelligence and Protection Center is an innovative model that serves as a blueprint for other companies that want to incorporate intelligence fusion into their business.
