The twenty-sixth meeting of the Computer Market Analysis Group ...

Minutes of the 26 th meeting of the Computer Market Analysis Group (CMAG)
The twenty-sixth meeting of the Computer Market Analysis Group (CMAG) was held at HP’s facilities in Palo Alto
on August 24-25, 2000. The focus of the meeting was on Competitive Intelligence (CI). This meeting marked the
tenth anniversary of CMAG, which was established in 1990. Attendees included:
Melanie Strub, AT+T
Shannon Whiting, BMC Software
Para Anderson, Canon
Aaron Hicks, Cisco
Arthur Rangel, Cisco
Sherry Sumits, Cisco
Pat Johnson, Compaq
Kevin Hale, Compaq
Jon Hokama, Compaq
Paulo Medrado, Compaq
Armin Porter, Compaq
Merna Smith, Computer Curriculum Corporation
Shirley Black, Computer Curriculum Corporation
Doug Schwegman, CyberSource
Scott Clark, Dell
Denise Offutt, Epson
Marsha Haugen, HP
Leslie Imai, HP
Brenda Opine, HP
David Shaw, HP
Cynthia Sommer, HP
Teresa Streit, HP
Marie Bernard, HP
Gary Flynn, HP
Paul Fennelly, HP
William Bernard, IBM
Nancy Breiman, IBM
Michael Giudice, IBM
Shari Morwood, IBM
Joe Plunkett, IBM
Sarah Tron, IBM
Richard Yeardye, IBM Canada
Rebecca Behrens, IBM Global Services
Steve Sechrist, InFocus
Steve Blanton, Intel
Heidi Taylor, Intel
Joe Gatto, IPR
John Hagens, IPR
Jeff Young, IPR
Gail Dysktra, Microsoft
Laura Fonda, Microsoft
Susan Hoxie, Microsoft
Thomas Wong, Microsoft
Erecca Nash, NCR
David Eckert, Novell
Kirk Jorgensen, Novell
Maia Pindar, Xerox
Guest and CMAG members making presentations at the meeting were:
Allen Long
Amelia Kassel
Lisa Pizzarello
Celeste Bishop
Joe Plunkett
Merna Smith
Long and Associates
MarketingBase
Kaiser Associates
Bishop Market Resources
IBM
Computer Cirriculum Corp.
Thursday, September 24th
Teresa Streit of HP led off with some welcoming remarks. John Hagens of IPR followed with a retrospective look
at the industry over the ten years that CMAG has been in existence and a discussion of the group’s purpose and
mission. Denise Offutt of Epson then provided an overview of legal restrictions and antitrust guidelines as they
relate to CMAG. A copy of the agenda and the meeting’s presentations are available for download at
http://www.iprnet.com/cmag.htm - Files for CMAG members (password is cmonly). Note: other related files are
available here including the CMAG membership database, the CMAG description and mission statement, trade
association guidelines relevant for CMAG, and presentations from previous CMAG meetings.
The meeting’s first presentation (“CI: From Basics to the Boardroom”) was delivered by Allen Long of Long and
Associates. He provided an overview of the CI group’s role and the required skillsets for its members, with
suggestions as to the ideal composition of a CI team. He also discussed legal/ethical practices for obtaining
competitive intelligence, as well as communication flows to/from the CI group. He concluded with a case study
dealing with dynamic forecasting. Followup questions dealt with the role of counter-intelligence; industries where

CI activity is more highly advanced, as opposed to those in which it is still developing; and differences in
legal/ethical guidelines by region or the size of a company in its industry.
Amelia Kassel led off the day’s second session with a presentation entitled, “The Internet: Going Beyond the
Competitor’s Website”. She began by defining competitive intelligence before discussing the benefits of the CI
function. She gave an overview of both free and fee-based (packaged market research, subscription) web sites and
other resources on the Internet, as well as sources beyond the Internet. She also detailed caveats as they relate to the
quality of information on the Internet. She then gave an overview of (and tips for using) the various search engines;
spiders (which “crawl the web for sites”) and directories (such as Yahoo). She also discussed next generation search
engines, metasearch engines, intelligent agents, metasites, specialty search engines, and sources for information that
is hard to find. She also reviewed value-added solutions/web monitoring solutions that augment traditional search
engines. She concluded by reviewing the capabilities of commercial database vendors and sources for company
research.
Lisa Pizzarello and Matt Getting of Kaiser Associates led off the first session of the afternoon with a presentation on
“CI Predictive Profiling”. She explained the concept of predictive profiling, and provided an overview on the
typical components of a predictive profile (company objectives, financial performance, organizational/decision
making, strategic focus areas, value chain components, use of partners/third parties/investments, strengths,
weaknesses). She discussed the process for developing and updating a predictive profile, and necessary ingredients
for success here. She also addressed the use of hypotheses to enrich and to present the predictive profile, and ways
to create demand for predictive profiles. She concluded with a breakout session, in which the group divided into
five teams, each of which assembled a predictive profile based on information provided at the outset of the session.
Rick Yeardye of IBM Canada then led a panel discussion on organizational models for competitive intelligence,
which included Merna Smith of Computer Curriculum Corporation and Shannon Whiting of BMC Software. The
discussion here focused on categories/types of competitive intelligence, roles/responsibilities, skills required, lessons
learned and the relationship between the CI group and the rest of the organization. Rick also presented a
competitive intelligence roadmap that indicated the main client groups (marketing, sales, business management,
product development) with the purposes of CI and the sources/type of information provided for each.
Joe Plunkett of IBM followed with a proposal for a WW IT revenue tracking program. He discussed the objectives
of such a problem and the needs that it would satisfy; some of the specifications of such a program; challenges and
requirements of such a program; and the steps involved in a phased rollout.
John Hagens of IPR wrapped up the first day’s session with a discussion of CMAG business. Cisco will host the
twenty-seventh meeting of the Computer Market Analysis Group on March 1-2, 2001. Suggested topics included a
panel discussion on competitive and market intelligence input/output via the Internet; uses and collection of enduser
data; ways of presenting market intelligence; career paths and best practices for staffing and retention in the
areas of competitive intelligence and market intelligence; channels; and forecasting methodologies and scenarios.
The group had a pleasant dinner at the Crowne Plaza Cabana after the first day’s sessions.
Friday, September 25th
The second day of the CMAG meeting started with a presentation delivered by Celeste Bishop of Bishop Market
Resources. In her presentation entitled “Setting up the CI Program … Building the Perfect Beast”, Celeste discussed
some of the steps necessary for setting up a CI program in a company. She began by outlining what she called the CI
Checklist, a list of activities that she recommended for the successful development of a CI program (CI audit,
assessment of needs, building an action plan, developing a foundation, setting expectations and designing
communications). Celeste then discussed some of the tools (branding, calendar, discovery network, smart agents,
war room) and techniques (triangulation, becoming a customer, win/loss reporting) that she has found useful in her
CI development efforts. The presentation continued with a discussion of the resources to consider using to gather CI
intelligence (primary, secondary, strategic partners). Celeste stressed the importance of leveraging the knowledge
held by key strategic partners (advertising agencies, public relations, investor relations, employees, sales teams,
customer service departments, librarians, R & D professionals). She then discussed the top 10 challenges to CI
success which include understanding your own business, over-analysis, timing, needs focus, communications

planning, CI team management, legal and ethical standards, and CI team marketing. Celeste concluded her
presentation with the following summary points: plan your work, work your plan, communicate creatively, money
matters, and expect the unexpected.
The second presentation of the day was the CMAG War Story delivered by Merna Smith of Computer Curriculum
Corporation (CCC). Merna first provided some background on CCC and then discussed the CI deliverables of her
organization, which were largely focused on supporting the sales team. The deliverables included competitive
profiles, industry analyses, and facts & stats. Merna indicated that the company profiles covered first tier
competitors (6-10 companies) in detail and minor competitors (10-20 companies) in summary form. The
deliverables were made available to the CCC teams via a binder and an intranet, generally, but also via corporate
briefings and one-to-one communications. Merna concluded with her insights into the keys to success for a CI
program. These included performing in-depth research, developing report templates, providing electronic delivery,
and communicating effectively and continuously.
The conference concluded with a discussion of CMAG business led by John Hagens of IPR. Topics for the next
CMAG meeting on March 1-2, 2001 at Cisco were discussed. The CMAG members then voted on the agenda topics
and the winner was “Corporate Market Intelligence/Competitive Intelligence Inputs and Outputs”. This challenging
topic will be attended to by the meeting’s agenda committee, which includes: Arthur Rangel (Cisco), Steve Blanton
(Intel), Doug Schwegman (CyberSource), Gary Flynn (Hewlett-Packard), Shari Morwood (IBM), Gail Dykstra
(Microsoft) and John Hagens (IPR). All CMAG members were strongly urged to forward speaker ideas to the
agenda committee.
There was also some discussion on recommendations for improving the presentation materials for the CMAG
meetings. These included: shortening the presentation sizes/lengths, having speakers or the hosting company provide
copies of the presentations at the meetings, and having the CMAG War Stories emphasize more about the failings
companies have experienced in connection with market/competitive intelligence. Also discussed were the desire to
have a one-paragraph abstract/description of the presentations and the attendee list provided prior to the meeting.
There was some interest expressed in having “electronic meetings” to continue discussions in between the regularly
scheduled CMAG meetings. Doug Schwegman of CyberSource and John Hagens of IPR agreed to work on this.
Finally, it was decided that CMAG would not spearhead the ITRT proposal put forth by Joe Plunkett of IBM.
Many thanks to Teresa Streit and Cynthia Sommer of HP for their hard work, which resulted in an excellent
meeting!