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The State of Competitive and Marketing Intelligence in South
Africa
By Vuyani Lingela
Founder, Mava Research Corporation ([email protected])
The evolution of competitive and marketing intelligence in South
Africa
Competitive or marketing intelligence (hereafter competitive
intelligence) is gaining recognition as a
business management tool and an academic discipline in South
Africa. However, its level of
development is nowhere closer to that of leading nations in this
field, such as France, Japan, Korea,
Israel, Canada, Sweden and the United States1,2
.
Recounting the evolution of competitive intelligence in South
Africa, Viviers and Muller1
reported
that, following the opening of the South African economy to the
international market after the first
democratic elections in April 1994, competitive intelligence was
associated with industrial espionage
because of the connotation made between intelligence and spying
by the security forces of the
apartheid regime. This perception was exacerbated by the fact
that former apartheid security
officials who became competitive intelligence consultants were
mostly involved in counter-
intelligence using less ethical information gathering
activities. The new government was also actively
probing whether competitive intelligence is a legal activity and
whether practitioners were not
conducting activities that clashed with those of the state
security and intelligence establishment.
The management aspect of competitive intelligence gradually
overtook the counter-intelligence and
security aspects and, with that change, the number of
competitive intelligent practitioners
increased. The first chapter of the Society of Competitive
Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) Southern
Africa was established, followed by the second association, the
South African Association of
Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SAACIP), which was
established in 1999. In December 2003,
SCIP had 18 members in South Africa1. Unfortunately, due to
declining membership, there two
groups were not functioning in 2010. As a result, there is no
recognised list of practicing competitive
intelligence professionals in South Africa3.
The role of government in supporting competitive intelligence in
South Africa
In South Africa, competitive intelligence is predominantly
adopted by local subsidiaries of
multinational companies1,4
. Viviers and Muller1
explain that the more companies rely on exports and
interaction with the international market, there more they are
inclined to adopt competitive
intelligence and the greater their understanding of the role and
benefits of competitive intelligence
as a strategic business decision tool. They also observed that
managers that have had international
exposure, because of their work at multinational or foreign
firms, are more familiar with the
discipline and more inclined to practice competitive
intelligence.
There are calls from the South African academic community2,3
for research on the role of
government in supporting competitive intelligence as a means to
enhance national competitiveness,
following the examples of France and Canada. Du Toit3
pointed out the need to educate
governments in Africa about competitive intelligence so that
African countries could compete on a
more equal footing with developed countries. This need is
informed by the understanding that the
goal of competitive intelligence is to provide actionable
intelligence that could have an impact on
the competitiveness of an organisation, company or country.
Unique competitive intelligence functions to South Africa
Even though the practice of competitive intelligence differs
across firms and countries, the best
practice in the process of competitive intelligence involves the
development of intelligence
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products, their flow to decision makers on a timely basis, and
the incorporation of the said
intelligence into the decision making process5.
An example to illustrate the differences in the practice of
competitive intelligence across firms and
countries is the analyses of the impact of changes in the
regulatory environment in a structured and
formalised real-time manner, which is particularly unique
competitive intelligence function to localsubsidiaries of
multinational companies based in South Africa
1. This is because companies in South
Africa are required by law to report the number of people they
employ from previously
disadvantaged groups (i.e., non-whites, females and disabled
people) in various levels of their
company and should meet certain targets. Because failure to
report on progress may result in heavy
penalties, companies operating in South Africa have the
necessary administrative and reporting
structures in place to comply with the law1.
References
1. Viviers, W. and Muller, M-L. 2004. The evolution of
competitive intelligence in South Africa: Early1980s2003. Journal
of Competitive Intelligence and Management 2(2): 53-67.
2.
Viviers, W., Muller M-L. and Du Toit, A.S.A. 2005. Competitive
intelligence: An instrument toenhance South Africa's
competitiveness. South African Journal of Economic and
Management
Sciences 8(2): 246-254.
3. Du Toit, A. 2012. Using competitiveness to enhance Africas
competitiveness: Practices in SouthAfrica. Proceedings of 2012
International Conference on Electronics, Information and
Communication Engineering, March 1-2, 2012, Macau.
4. Muller, M-L. 2007. Global competitive intelligence practice.
South African Journal of InformationManagement 9(4), doi:
10.4102/sajim.v9i4.36
5. Muller, M-L. 2012. Beyond Competitive Intelligence Innovation
through Competitive Strategy.IBIS
