Competitor Information andCompetitive Knowledge Management in a Large Industrial Organization

Thisthesis supplements the systematic approach to competitive intelligence and competitor analysis by introducing an information-processing perspective on management of the competitive environment and competitors therein. The cognitive questions connected to the intelligence process and also the means that organizational actors use in sharing information are discussed. The ultimate aim has been to deepen knowledge of the different intraorganizational processes that are used in acorporate organization to manage and exploit the vast amount of competitor information that is received from the environment. Competitor information and competitive knowledge management is examined as a process, where organizational actorsidentify and perceive the competitive environment by using cognitive simplification, make interpretations resulting in learning and finally utilize competitor information and competitive knowledge in their work processes. The sharing of competitive information and competitive knowledge is facilitated by intraorganizational networks that evolve as a means of developing a shared, organizational level knowledge structure and ensuring that the right information is in the right place at the right time. This thesis approaches competitor information and competitive knowledge management both theoretically and empirically. Based on the conceptual framework developed by theoretical elaboration, further understanding of the studied phenomena is sought by an empirical study. The empirical research was carried out in a multinationally operating forest industry company. This thesis makes some preliminary suggestions of improving the competitive intelligence process. It is concluded that managing competitor information and competitive knowledge is not simply a question of managing information flow or improving sophistication of competitor analysis, but the crucial question to be solved is rather, how to improve the cognitive capabilities connected to identifying and making interpretations of the competitive environment and how to increase learning. It is claimed that competitive intelligence can not be treated like an organizational function or assigned solely to a specialized intelligence unit.

Generating competitive advantage through competitor information systems

This pro gradu –thesis discusses generating competitive advantage through competitor information systems. The structure of this thesis follows the structure of the WCA model by Alter (1996). In the WCA model, business process is influenced by three separate but connected elements: information, technology, and process participants. The main research question is how competitor information can be incorporated into or made into a tool creating competitive advantage. Research subquestions are: How does competitor information act as a part of the business process creating competitive advantage? How is a good competitor information system situated and structured in an organisation? How can management help information generate competitive advantage in the business process with participants, information, and technology? This thesis discusses each of the elements separate, but the elements are connected to each other and to competitive advantage. Information is discussed by delving into competitor information and competitor analysis. Competitive intelligence and competitor analysis requires commitment throughout the organisation, including top management, the desire to perform competitive intelligence and the desire to use the end products of that competitive intelligence. In order to be successful, systematic competitive intelligence and competitor analysis require vision, willingness to strive for the goals set, and clear strategies to proceed. Technology is discussed by taking a look into the function of the competitor information systems play and the place they occupy within an organization. In addition, there is discussion about the basic infrastructure of competitor information systems, and the problems competitor information systems can have plaguing them. In order for competitor information systems to be useful and worthy of the resources it takes to develop and maintain them, competitor information systems require on-going resource allocation and high quality information. In order for competitor information systems justify their existence business process participants need to maintain and utilize competitor information systems on all levels. Business process participants are discussed through management practices. This thesis discusses way to manage information, technology, and process participants, when the goal is to generate competitive advantage through competitor information systems. This is possible when information is treated as a resource with value, technology requires strategy in order to be successful within an organization, and process participants are an important resource. Generating competitive advantage through competitor information systems is possible when the elements of information, technology, and business process participants all align advantageously.

Kilpailija-analyysin kehittäminen Ruotsin teräsrakennemarkkinoista

Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli selvittää sekä teoreettisen että empiirisen tarkastelun kautta kilpailun analysointia ja kilpailijatiedon merkitystä projektivientiyrityksessä. Tutkimuksessa pyrittiin analysoimaan, kuinka yrityksessä tunnistetaan kilpailijat ja minkä tyyppistä kilpailijatietoa organisaatiossa tarvitaan. Lisäksi pyrittiin haastatteluin selvittämään tärkeimmät käyttökohteet kilpailijatiedolle sekä lähinnä yrityksen sisäiset tietolähteet.Tutkimuksen teoreettisessa osassa pyrittiin antamaan lukijalle käsitteellistä perustaa yrityksen kilpailustrategian muotoutumiselle, kilpailijatiedon merkitykselle sekä hallinnalle informaatiojärjestelmää apuna käyttäen. Näitä tietoja hyödyntäen saatiin kehitettyä empiirisessä osuudessa tietojärjestelmän runko case-yritykseen. Tutkimus toteutettiin lähinnä Pohjoismaisilla teräsrakentamisen markkinoilla toimivaan projektivientiyritykseen. Organisaation kilpailijatiedon hyväksikäytön kriittiseksi tekijäksi osoittautui tiedon tarpeen ja kysynnän määrittely sekä sen vertaaminen nykyisiin jo organisaatiossa oleviin tietoihin. Toisaalta tietoja oli suhteellisen paljon olemassa, mutta se oli aika pienen joukon käytössä. Yrityksessä ei ollut aiemmin tutkittu kilpailijatiedon käyttöä, joten tiedon tarvetta laajemmin ei oltu aiemmin tiedostettu. Koko ajan tulee kuitenkin muistaa, että aikaa kannattaa uhrata vain sellaiseen toimintaan, mikä edistää yrityksen liiketoimintaa. Tältä pohjalta halutaankin ottaa käyttöön paikasta ja ajasta riippumaton informaatiojärjestelmä.Tietojärjestelmästä haluttiin yksinkertainen, jotta sen käyttö ei olisi kellekään kynnyskysymys hyödyllisen tiedon käyttöön. Järjestelmällä halutaan turvata kilpailijatiedon tehokas välittyminen oikeille käyttäjille oikeaan aikaan. Toisaalta järjestelmältä halutaan tutkimuspohjaa esimerkiksi hävittyjen kauppojen analyyseihin, ja näin voidaankin sanoa, että järjestelmä oppii ja opettaa käyttäjiensä välityksellä.

Offering planning process development: Bridging the Offering Gaps and Consolidating Top Priority Needs in Product Offering

The aim of this Thesis is to study how to manage the front-end of the offering planning process. This includes actual process development and methods to gather and analyze information to achieve the best outcome in customer oriented product offering. Study is carried out in two parts: theoretical part and company related part. Theoretical framework is created introducing different types of approaches to manage product planning processes. Products are seen as platforms and they are broken down to subsystems to show different parts of the development. With the help of the matrix-based approaches product platform related information is gathered and analyzed. In this kind of analysis business/market drivers and cus-tomer/competitor information are connected with product subsystems. This gives possibilities to study product gaps/needs and possible future ideas/scenarios in different customer segments. Company related part consists of offering planning process development in real company environment. Process formation includes documents and tools that guide planning from the information gathering to the prioritization and decision making.

Competitors' Financial Performance Monitoring Model

The objective of the thesis was to develop a competitors’ financial performance monitoring model for management reporting. The research consisted of the selections of the comparison group and the performance meters as well as the actual creation of the model. A brief analysis of the current situation was also made. The aim of the results was to improve the financial reporting quality in the case organization by adding external business environment observation to the management reports. The comparison group for the case company was selected to include five companies that were all involved in power equipment engineering and project type business. The most limiting factor related to the comparison group selection was the availability of quarterly financial reporting. The most suitable performance meters were defined to be the developments of revenue, order backlog and EBITDA. These meters should be monitored systematically on quarterly basis and reported to the company management in a brief and informative way. The monitoring model was based on spreadsheet construction with key characteristics being usability, flexibility and simplicity. The model acts as a centered storage for financial competitor information as well as a reporting tool. The current market situation is strongly affected by the economic boom in the recent years and future challenges can be clearly seen in declining order backlogs. The case company has succeeded well related to its comparison group during the observation period since its business volume and profitability have developed in the best way.

Markkinatutkimustiedon hyödyntäminen yrityksen myynnin ja markkinoinnin tarpeisiin

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää, miten yrityksessä käytetään markkinatutkimustietoa ja -työkaluja sekä miten markkinatutkimustiedon käyttöä yrityksessä voisi kehittää tukemaan myynnin ja markkinoinnin tarpeita. Tutkimus suoritettiin laadullisena case-tutkimuksena. Tutkimuksen teoreettinen lähdeaineisto kerättiin kirjallisuudesta sekä tieteellisistä artikkeleista ja empiirinen aineisto suorittamalla haastatteluja sekä kysely yrityksen työntekijöille. Tutkimuksen teoreettisena pohjana käytettiin liiketoimintatiedon, markkinatiedon ja kilpailijatiedon hallintaa sekä markkinatietoprosessia erityisesti tiedon käytön ja hyödyntämisen näkökulmasta. Empiirinen aineisto tutkimukseen kerättiin haastattelemalla sekä suorittamalla kysely yrityksen myynnin ja markkinoinnin parissa toimiville henkilöille. Niin teorialähteiden kuin kohdeyrityksessä kerätyn empiirisen materiaalin pohjalta voidaan todeta, että markkinatietoa käytetään asiakasrajapinnassa sekä yrityksen sisäisessä strategiatyössä. Markkinatutkimustyökalujen ja -tiedon käyttöön organisaatiossa kannustavat tiedon helppo saatavuus ja käyttö sekä ajankäytön resurssointi uuden oppimiseen. Myös tiedon tuoreus ja lyhyet yhteenvedot koettiin tärkeiksi tekijöiksi tiedon tehokkaamman hyödyntämisen edesauttajaksi.

Information Society in Croatia, Landsc@pes of Knowledge for Development

Sabbatical Studies Report

Competitor Analysis in a Finnish Forest Industry Company

Työn tavoitteena oli analysoida yhden metsäteollisuusyrityksen tuotantolaitosta; sen heikkouksia ja vahvuuksia sekä määrittää tarvittavat kilpailukeinot. Työ perustuu Porterin kilpailija-analyysin viitekehykseen. Tarvittava kilpailijatieto on kerätty pääosin julkisista lähteistä, yrityksen tietokannoista, ja työntekijöiltä sekä tuotetestauksella. Kilpailijan analysointi koostuu lähinnä kilpailijan tuotantoresurssien, palveluiden ja tuotteiden analysoinnista. Lisäksi työssä käydään läpi kilpailijan strategiaa ja tavoitteita sekä kilpailijan olettamuksia itsestään ja kilpailijoistaan. Ennen varsinaista kilpailija-analyysia työssä tutustutaan metsäteollisuuden kasvuodotuksiin ja tulevaisuuden markkinatrendeihin, joita hyödynnetään johtopäätöksissä. Vaikkakin kilpailija keskittyy eri loppukäyttösegmentille kuin tutkimuksen teettänyt yritys, on se varteenotettava kilpailija tiettyjen tuoteominaisuuksien ansiosta. Kuitenkaan nykyisellä palvelutasolla ja resursseilla kilpailija ei ole tällä hetkellä suuri uhka yritykselle. Sen vuoksi toimenpide-ehdotukset ovat vähäiset ja liittyvät lähinnä markkinoinnillisiin näkökohtiin.

Customer satisfaction data utilization: identifying value drivers and information use practices

The objective of this master’s thesis was twofold: first to examine the concept of customer value and its drivers and second to identify information use practices. The first part of the study represents explorative research that was carried out by examining a case company’s customer satisfaction data that was used to identify sales and technical customer service related value drivers on a detailed attribute level. This was followed by an examination of whether these attributes had been commented on in a positive or a negative light and what were the reasons why the case company had received higher or lower ratings than its competitor. As a result a classification of different sales and technical customer service related attributes was created. The results indicated that the case company has performed well, but that the results varied on the company’s business segment level. The case company’s staff, service and the benefits from a long-lasting relationship came up in a positive light whereas attitude, flexibility and reaction time came up in a negative light. The reasons for a higher or lower score in comparison to competitor varied. The results indicated that a customer’s satisfaction with the company’s performance did not always mean that the company was outperforming the competition. The second part of the study focused on customer satisfaction information use from the viewpoints of information access, dissemination and reaction. The study was conducted by running an internal survey among the case company’s staff. The results showed that information use practices varied across the company and some units or teams had taken a more proactive approach to the information use than others.

Selecting from amongst non–nested conditional variance models: information criteria and portfolio determination

We consider the finite sample properties of model selection by information criteria in conditionally heteroscedastic models. Recent theoretical results show that certain popular criteria are consistent in that they will select the true model asymptotically with probability 1. To examine the empirical relevance of this property, Monte Carlo simulations are conducted for a set of non–nested data generating processes (DGPs) with the set of candidate models consisting of all types of model used as DGPs. In addition, not only is the best model considered but also those with similar values of the information criterion, called close competitors, thus forming a portfolio of eligible models. To supplement the simulations, the criteria are applied to a set of economic and financial series. In the simulations, the criteria are largely ineffective at identifying the correct model, either as best or a close competitor, the parsimonious GARCH(1, 1) model being preferred for most DGPs. In contrast, asymmetric models are generally selected to represent actual data. This leads to the conjecture that the properties of parameterizations of processes commonly used to model heteroscedastic data are more similar than may be imagined and that more attention needs to be paid to the behaviour of the standardized disturbances of such models, both in simulation exercises and in empirical modelling.

Transmission Of Intra-cellular Genetic Information: A System Proposal.

One of the great challenges of the scientific community on theories of genetic information, genetic communication and genetic coding is to determine a mathematical structure related to DNA sequences. In this paper we propose a model of an intra-cellular transmission system of genetic information similar to a model of a power and bandwidth efficient digital communication system in order to identify a mathematical structure in DNA sequences where such sequences are biologically relevant. The model of a transmission system of genetic information is concerned with the identification, reproduction and mathematical classification of the nucleotide sequence of single stranded DNA by the genetic encoder. Hence, a genetic encoder is devised where labelings and cyclic codes are established. The establishment of the algebraic structure of the corresponding codes alphabets, mappings, labelings, primitive polynomials (p(x)) and code generator polynomials (g(x)) are quite important in characterizing error-correcting codes subclasses of G-linear codes. These latter codes are useful for the identification, reproduction and mathematical classification of DNA sequences. The characterization of this model may contribute to the development of a methodology that can be applied in mutational analysis and polymorphisms, production of new drugs and genetic improvement, among other things, resulting in the reduction of time and laboratory costs.

[evaluation Of Data On Live Birth Certificates From The Information System On Live Births (sinasc) In Campinas, São Paulo, 2009].

To assess the completeness and reliability of the Information System on Live Births (Sinasc) data. A cross-sectional analysis of the reliability and completeness of Sinasc's data was performed using a sample of Live Birth Certificate (LBC) from 2009, related to births from Campinas, Southeast Brazil. For data analysis, hospitals were grouped according to category of service (Unified National Health System, private or both), 600 LBCs were randomly selected and the data were collected in LBC-copies through mothers and newborns' hospital records and by telephone interviews. The completeness of LBCs was evaluated, calculating the percentage of blank fields, and the LBCs agreement comparing the originals with the copies was evaluated by Kappa and intraclass correlation coefficients. The percentage of completeness of LBCs ranged from 99.8%-100%. For the most items, the agreement was excellent. However, the agreement was acceptable for marital status, maternal education and newborn infants' race/color, low for prenatal visits and presence of birth defects, and very low for the number of deceased children. The results showed that the municipality Sinasc is reliable for most of the studied variables. Investments in training of the professionals are suggested in an attempt to improve system capacity to support planning and implementation of health activities for the benefit of maternal and child population.

Geographical Distribution Of The Association Between El Niño South Oscillation And Dengue Fever In The Americas: A Continental Analysis Using Geographical Information System-based Techniques.

El Niño South Oscillation (ENSO) is one climatic phenomenon related to the inter-annual variability of global meteorological patterns influencing sea surface temperature and rainfall variability. It influences human health indirectly through extreme temperature and moisture conditions that may accelerate the spread of some vector-borne viral diseases, like dengue fever (DF). This work examines the spatial distribution of association between ENSO and DF in the countries of the Americas during 1995-2004, which includes the 1997-1998 El Niño, one of the most important climatic events of 20(th) century. Data regarding the South Oscillation index (SOI), indicating El Niño-La Niña activity, were obtained from Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The annual DF incidence (AIy) by country was computed using Pan-American Health Association data. SOI and AIy values were standardised as deviations from the mean and plotted in bars-line graphics. The regression coefficient values between SOI and AIy (rSOI,AI) were calculated and spatially interpolated by an inverse distance weighted algorithm. The results indicate that among the five years registering high number of cases (1998, 2002, 2001, 2003 and 1997), four had El Niño activity. In the southern hemisphere, the annual spatial weighted mean centre of epidemics moved southward, from 6° 31' S in 1995 to 21° 12' S in 1999 and the rSOI,AI values were negative in Cuba, Belize, Guyana and Costa Rica, indicating a synchrony between higher DF incidence rates and a higher El Niño activity. The rSOI,AI map allows visualisation of a graded surface with higher values of ENSO-DF associations for Mexico, Central America, northern Caribbean islands and the extreme north-northwest of South America.

[access To Information About How To Prevent Oral Problems Among School Children In The Public School Network].

The scope of this study is to identify the prevalence of access to information about how to prevent oral problems among schoolchildren in the public school network, as well as the factors associated with such access. This is a cross-sectional and analytical study conducted among 12-year-old schoolchildren in a Brazilian municipality with a large population. The examinations were performed by 24 trained dentists and calibrated with the aid of 24 recorders. Data collection occurred in 36 public schools selected from the 89 public schools of the city. Descriptive, univariate and multiple analyses were conducted. Of the 2510 schoolchildren included in the study, 2211 reported having received information about how to prevent oral problems. Access to such information was greater among those who used private dental services; and lower among those who used the service for treatment, who evaluated the service as regular or bad/awful. The latter use toothbrush only or toothbrush and tongue scrubbing as a means of oral hygiene and who reported not being satisfied with the appearance of their teeth. The conclusion drawn is that the majority of schoolchildren had access to information about how to prevent oral problems, though access was associated with the characteristics of health services, health behavior and outcomes.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Assessing Dental Health

The present study investigated the distribution profile of dental caries and its association with areas of social deprivation at the individual and contextual level. The cluster sample consisted of 1,002 12-year-old schoolchildren from Piracicaba, SP, Brazil. The DMFT Index was used for dental caries and the Care Index was used to determine access to dental services. On the individual level, variables were associated with a better oral status. On the contextual level, areas were not associated with oral status. However, maps enabled determining that the central districts have better social and oral conditions than the deprived outlying districts.