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Title:
Smart Services: Competitive Information Strategies, Solutions and Success Stories for Service Businesses
Review:
The front cover of "Smart Services" includes a quote from Andrew
Garvin, the CEO of Find/SVP saying: "Finally a book that nails down
what every service business needs to know about competition and
competitive intelligence. 'Smart Services' offers competitive
information strategies that firms can put to immediate use." I wanted
to stop this review here, as I don't think that I could have given a
better summary and description of this excellent book. However my
brief for doing this review included an approximate word count, and
I'm not brave enough to upset the Free Pint management by not adding a
few words of my own.
Smart Services is divided into three parts, of which the first, "The
Competitive Landscape" and the second, "The Competitive Issues" occupy
the bulk of the book. The final part "The Competitive Game" summarises
the previous sections with suggestions on ways of implementing the
advice and processes described in the first two sections.
"The Competitive Landscape" gives a comprehensive description of where
competition can come from for a service business. The section
describes the challenges facing service businesses and the types of
competition faced. Of importance, the book does not just focus on
traditional competitors but includes discussion on competition from
service businesses that appear to be in completely different sectors,
government and internal competition, and other types of indirect
competition. This section is also good on how problems facing service
businesses differ from those offering tangible products.
The second section looks at the issues of collecting information on
competitors, with chapters on how to find out who is competing,
competitor strategies, sales and marketing, assessing performance and
looking at who actually runs the competitor business. As with the
first section, the end of each chapter includes a brief summary giving
the key points mentioned in the chapter as well as suggestions on how
information gathered can be fed back and used in company strategies
and action plans. This is key, as there is no point collecting
information on competitors that is ignored or filed away "for later":
such information is not competitive intelligence, as it has no impact
on company actions.
Having said all this, was there anything about this book I disliked? I
have to answer yes - reluctantly, as my dislikes are fairly minor, and
possibly reflect the fact that I am not new to CI or to service
businesses. My first complaint is that the examples in the book are
almost entirely from the USA or Canada. All suggested sources for
information except one (the European Case Study clearinghouse at
Cranfield - a unique global source) are North American. Thus the book
cannot be used for specific advice on business sources outside the US
and Canada. This is a minor quibble though, as the book does not claim
to be a guide to sources.
A second complaint is actually addressed in the books introduction.
Sawyer states, "the book is very light on models". I believe that this
was a mistake, as there are analysis tools that can and should be used
when examining service businesses. Good CI involves knowing how to
interpret information just as much as finding and collecting it. I
think that several chapters would have benefited if there had been
more examination of how to interpret available information and less
discussion of the problems involved in doing CI on service businesses.
However maybe I'm unfair in expecting this in a book that does cover
so much in just over 200 pages.
Free Pint Reviewer:
Arthur Weiss is a UK based management consultant specialising in
competitive intelligence and strategy. He has worked in the
information industry for over 15 years and has written and presented
on competitive intelligence, marketing and Internet related topics in
the UK, Europe and elsewhere. Arthur is the managing partner of AWARE,
a CI consultancy offering clients CI research, analysis and training.
He can be contacted through AWARE's web-site at
<http://www.competitive-intelligence.co.uk/>.
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