All ACI programs teach students how to overcome the most challenging competitive intelligence issues. The following are sample lessons taught in:

Problem Sets

Analysis and Competitive Benchmarking

Focusing on Your Real Competitive Threats
Uncovering Your Rival'sCost of Operations - Even A Privately Held One!
Anticipating the Predator

1. Focusing on Your Real Competitive Threats

The marketplace has totally upset the balance of power in your industry over the past five years. New entrants, substitute products, even more powerful customers have emerged. You have a small competitive intelligence effort, thus limited resources to apply. In fact, if you examined the entire market, you would encounter literally hundreds of companies to monitor - far more than you can manage.

Questions:
1. Which are the major competitive threats that should concern me and my particular SBU?
2. Will those threats remain the same over the next five years? If not, how might they change and which ones will likely change?
3. What factors do I have to consider when weighing each competitive threat against the other?

2. Uncovering Your Rival'sCost of Operations - Even A Privately Held One!

Our rival, a relatively new, privately held company, manages to consistently under price its products. We do not understand how - or if - it has lower costs than our business. We believe it is under pricing its products and services to gain market share. Unfortunately, this speculation can be very dangerous. If we simply react and lower our prices in response, without changing our cost structure, we will certainly squeeze our margins and our cash, plus it's uncertain whether or not we will even make a dent in the market share.

Questions:
1. How do I begin to assess our rival's cost structure?
2. Is profitability or cash flow its greatest concern?
3. Can we determine its actual cost of operations and what its key cost drivers appear to be?
4. Where do I find the raw data necessary to uncover much of the cost information needed to do my analysis?
5. How can I determine the rival's strategy based on various elements of its cost structure?

3. Anticipating the Predator

Our industry has seen a rash of mergers and acquisitions, with a number of the so-called predators coming from outside the industry. The result of all these acquisitions is confusion and concern. We need the ability to anticipate potential predators, identify the sectors from which they will come and understand their overall investment or acquisition strategy.

Questions:
1. Of the 400-plus predators we see entering our market, can we identify the three leading candidates to prepare a proper defensive or offensive strategy?
2. How do we construct an analytical framework to screen out all but the most likely predators?
3. What industry dynamics do we need to consider to build this filtering mechanism?