Information Sources

The Critical Surveillance Factors -also called Key Surveillance Factors, hereinafter CSF- are each expression that represent a need for knowledge/intelligence within an organisation. They provide an answer to a question raised in the organisation on an external issue. The CSF can be related to each activity of the value chain of each department of an organisation. The results of monitoring these factors will influence in one way or another the competitiveness of the organisation.

Competitors’ surveillance is one of the main focuses of Competitive Intelligence and, in most cases, one of the essential. Monitoring the movements of our competitors can help us to identify opportunities and threats, to anticipate movements of competition, to identify patterns of behavior, to redefine our value proposition, to modify or improve our products, etc. However, it is sometimes difficult to find information of interest, because our competitors are not big companies or are not very active on the Internet, so we offer some guidelines that can help you: