How to make the most of human intelligence at an event

It's important to remember that an intelligence approach can be applied to a variety of distinct fields and fields of application, for multiple purposes or results. Prioritizing the areas to be monitored is therefore crucial when embarking on this exercise. There's nothing like trade shows, congresses and symposia for human intelligence and bringing front-line information back to the company.

Depending on our priorities, precise sources of information will be identified beforehand. Integrating the human dimension can therefore prove judicious, since it will enable us to validate information, add depth according to context, and of course anticipate new trends.

Let's take the example of competitive intelligence. By focusing on your competitors, you'll be able to track their strategic evolutions on subjects critical to your business.

The objectives could be as follows.

The objectives might be to seek information on:

• The strategies of your competitors;
• The new products or services they are bringing to market;
• Their pricing policies;
• Their recruitment issues;
• The number of customers they've lost or won;
• Any partnerships signed, mergers or acquisitions.

For example, you're on your way to an automation trade show in Germany. Here are some ideas for strategies you could adopt to obtain key information from human intelligence:

• Use the mystery shopper strategy with a new representative to find out what's new and chat with your competitors' local reps at the start of the show;
• Attend a competitor's training session on a new technology to understand new trends and ask questions;
• Chat with your competitors' customers who have visited your competitors' booth to understand their level of satisfaction.

To ensure the success of this human intelligence, it's important to mobilize the company's internal network to put all the chances on your side.

Before the event:

• It's important to have a strategy in order to determine the type of information you want to go out and identify who would be the best people to participate within your team.
• A checklist to make sure you don't forget anything and that you get the type of information that's important to the different team members, even if they're not present at the event.
• Also include in your respective agendas, a common time after the event, to discuss your findings and define a mini-action plan so you don't miss out on a great opportunity. Someone in the R&D department won't have the same questions as someone in sales.

During the event:

• Determine a specific place known to all to put or record the information collected.
• All too often, everyone leaves with certain documents, but nothing is centralized for post-event analysis and key information gets lost.

After the event:

• Return to the checklist at the beginning and meet with participants and the team to discuss the show experience, not forgetting your discoveries in relation to competitors.
• Confirm the follow-ups to be carried out based on the notes taken during the event.

Participating in this type of event is an investment for your company, and is also a gold mine for those who know how to organize themselves and adopt a human intelligence strategy that complements electronic intelligence in a competitive intelligence context.