Archive for the 'Company Research' Category

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Facebook Intelligence

Published on March 11, 2008 in Canada, Company Research, Courts, Search Engines and Social Sites. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

FI: Facebook Intelligence – Part Deux

Google has begun the indexation of Facebook pages.

The best approach to find Facebook content via Google is not to simply plug in name or keyword(s)…Try adding the keyword, “Facebook” to your initial query.

What the Investigator Must Know About Facebook

In the closed community of Facebook, Google asked permission to index the pages. If you are an Investigator, and your subject is represented, then asking permission to see his or her page is contact with a represented litigant. In Canada, if the opposing litigant is represented by council, then you may not contact him or her in person, by telephone, or electronically. In most cases you have to ask to be listed as a friend to view the subject’s Facebook page. Doing this will be considered improperly making contact with the litigant and whatever you find will be deemed inadmissible.

However, what you find in Google, other search engines, and unrelated Facebook pages may be used as the basis for a motion for the production of the subject’s entire Facebook page as happened in KOURTESIS V. JORIS (2007).

Business Identity Theft

Published on March 11, 2008 in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence, Dirty Tricks, Fraud, Identity Fraud, Identity Theft, Methods and Private Investigator. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Infamous hacker Kevin Poulson paid the defaulted Yellow Page accounts of escort services to get their defunct telephone numbers reactivated. He collected the profits and when the police became interested, only the original advertiser was on record with the telephone company. I once saw this done in a home renovation scam.

In Cynthia Hetherington’s excellent book, [asa link]1889150495[/asa], she tells of a group of crooks who moved into an office recently vacated by an insurance company. They took-up the old phone number and began selling insurance.

When new policy holders complained about bad service to the insurance company’s head office, the scam was revealed, but the crooks had moved on.

It’s not just people who have their identity stolen.

The Beginners Guide to Competive Intelligence

Published on February 20, 2008 in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence and Private Investigator. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

If you are new to the concepts of Competitive Intelligence, then you may find Peek Inside Your Competitor’s Business, useful.

Other interesting Competitive Intelligence articles at BNET offer useful guidance:

  • How to Gather Competitive Research
  • Thou Shalt Not Steal Thy Competitor’s Secrets
  • Where to Find the Competitive Data You Need
  • Case Study: Bain Looks Inside a Japanese Automaker

    • And our short article, Ethics, or Not, about our 3 simple rules.

    The Most Useful SEC Filings

    Published on February 4, 2008 in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

    The most useful forms to examine when researching US listed companies:

  • 10-K: A yearly report that provides a comprehensive financial overview of a firm’s business. Contains more detail than the Annual Report to Shareholders that firms are also required to prepare.
  • 10-Q: An unaudited quarterly financial update that must be filed within 45 days of the conclusion of the most recent quarter.
  • 8-K: Reports events such as a senior management change or major strategic shifts such as a mergers and acquisitions.
  • DEF-14A: This is the definitive proxy statement that provides the date and agenda items for the company’s next annual meeting. Proxy statements may also provide the names of major shareholders, executive and director pay, director biographies, and any shareholder matters that may be up for a vote.
  • S-1: This is the Registration Statement filed when a company raises funds for any reason, whether to repay debt or buy another firm. The S-1 details how much money was raised and for what purpose.
  • Forms 3 & 4: These filings are the means by which company insiders (usually officers and directors) report sales or purchases of the firm’s stock. These reports inform the investors of personal transactions that may reflect the insiders’ assessment of the company’s prospects. Form 3 is an initial filing and Form 4 reflects changes in the holding.

    • Facebook Intelligence

    Published on January 28, 2008 in Canada, Company Research, Competitive Intelligence and Social Sites. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

    I don’t know how I so skillfully miss a good blog when I’m searching. Ian Smith’s blog, aptly named Ian’s iBlog, has been going since December 2006. Ian is a graduate of Concordia University in Montreal.

    His article entitled FI: Facebook Intelligence attracted my attention as it provides a good explanation of the value of searching this social network site.

    Big Company, Big Competitive Intelligence

    Published on January 25, 2008 in Company Research and Competitive Intelligence. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

    The following press release came across my desk yesterday. It illustrates how CI has become the domain of large corporations, maybe it always was. It is the large businesses that can afford the specialised personnel to fill the roll of CI professional.

    THU Jan 24, 08, 12:25 PM

    Competitive Intelligence: Processes to Produce Insights that Matter

    CHAPEL HILL, N.C., Jan. 24 /PRNewswire/ — Competitive Intelligence
    groups have a tough job…

    Specific best practices are revealed in Managing the Competition:
    Turning Competitive Intelligence into Strategy, a compelling benchmarking
    study conducted by Best Practices, LLC…

    Download a complimentary study excerpt at http://www3.best-in-class.com/rr904.htm.
    The study presents provocative sharing compiled from surveys and in-depth interviews with 29 top CI executives at such world-class companies as AstraZeneca, IBM, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Kodak, Eli Lilly and Abbott Labs…

    A brief sampling of harvested insights and best practices include:
    One benchmarked executive explains that CI analysts at his organization must develop executive recommendations beyond pure data analysis. This kind of accountability led to more empowerment of the CI team as company members are more likely to use competitive information if it is readily available.

    SEC Actions Blog

    Published on January 10, 2008 in Company Research, Courts and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

    Michael Thomas, a recovering corporate investigator in the Washington, DC-area, who blogs at The Daily Caveat put us onto the Porter Wright SEC Actions blog. This blog is a wealth of information about issues surrounding SEC enforcement actions.

    Searching SEC Records

    Published on January 9, 2008 in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

    The free full text search in the EDGAR system at the SEC goes back only the past 4 years and the header information in SEC filings goes back to 1994.

    The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Access to Archival Databases (NARA AAD) has an index of historical Securities and Exchange Commission public companies – searchable by officer and director names and company names. These records go back to 1972 in Proposed Sale of Unregistered Securities by Individuals and back to 1978 in Trading of Securities by Corporate Insiders.

    The descriptions of these two databases of SEC filings is as follows: Continue reading ‘Searching SEC Records’

    Strategic Research – CI and Market Research

    Published on January 7, 2008 in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence, Methods and Private Investigator. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

    The following Chicago Tribune article about Competitive Intelligence is very interesting. I have extracted the parts I find most interesting.

    You will see that most SCIP members do very little CI research and analysis. While the people interviewed are selling to the SME, it is clear that the organised efforts at CI are in large firms in established industries like the pharmaceutical industry.

    Fuld also points out that CI must serve strategic planning and that most companies combine the CI and Market Research into one department. I made this point in a previous article.

    Also notice that the CI researchers conducted interviews to gain information. They interviewed employees of the target firms and their family members. This is an approach any good Researcher (or Investigator) would take. Also notice that the interviews were not conducted under any form of pretext. Continue reading ‘Strategic Research – CI and Market Research’

    Strategic Research

    Published on January 4, 2008 in Company Research and Competitive Intelligence. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

    Strategic Planning (SP) was born in the 50′s and 60′s but failed to produce competitive advantage in the turbulent markets of the 80′s and 90′s. This failure was thought to be the death of SP, but it wasn’t a failure of the concept, but rather a failure of implementation by managers who did not realise that SP is always in flux. They also failed to recognise that SP was not one process but many.

    Managers who abandoned SP did not understand that it provides focus on what the company does best, while providing the flexibility to quickly explore and exploit opportunities through creative entrepreneurial solutions. Competitive Intelligence (CI) failed as a replacement for SP due to its normally underfunded tactical nature and led many businesses into poor decisions regarding the direction of their marketing efforts. CI must be fully integrated with strategic planning, but unfortunately, this rarely occurs. CI and Market Research are the different sides of the same coin and should be combined into one endeavour to serve strategic goals. In turbulent markets, SP may be the only clear beacon by which to navigate through the chaos. Continue reading ‘Strategic Research’

    More History of Commercial Intelligence

    Published on January 2, 2008 in Canada, Company Research and Competitive Intelligence. 0 Comments Tags: .

    An excellent article posted at Kent’s Imperative on 30 Nov 07, titled On the origins of competitive intelligence, offers some insight into how long Competitive Intelligence has been with us.

    Now a further interesting article dated 27 Dec 07 which includes this Canadian reference:

    A 1906 reference to the unnamed works printed by Commercial (Manitoba), “Proprietors of Commercial Intelligence”

    Guide to Advanced Search Strategies

    Published on December 24, 2007 in Company Research, Methods, Private Investigator and Search Engines. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

    I came across an excellent article on the Hybridsem blog about how to craft advanced search engine queries using Google, Yahoo and MSN .

    Rumors

    Published on April 30, 2007 in Company Research, Dirty Tricks, Reputation Management, Social Sites and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

    I’m a firm believer in letting other people do my research. Why should I do ‘original’ work that has already been done. When we do research to assist reputation management a lot of work has been done for us by rumourmonger and rumor debunking sites like Snopes. However, some malicious rumors originate with jealous competitors and radicals and require extensive research to identify the source, intent, and motive.

    For instance, rumors that one company or other is owned by the KKK or one CEO or another donates money to the Church of Satan have circulated for decades. However, the Internet have given such rumors wings.

    Companies can be destroyed by malicious rumors. A soft drink marketed to minorities in northeastern US cities, was almost bankrupted by a rumor that the drink contained a chemical that would make black men sterile.

    Rumors can put lives at risk. In 2005 a rumor spread by cell phone text messages caused violent riots in Pakistan. The rumor was that men would loose their manhood if they shook hands with a foreigner.

    In Rumor in the Marketplace: The Social Psychology of Commercial Hearsay (Auburn House Publishing, 1985), the authors suggest a public and forceful denial of the rumor as soon as possible by using solid evidence backed by experts. Sometimes the expert evidence is expert research that debunks the rumor.

    The Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act

    Published on April 12, 2007 in Canada, Company Research, Competitive Intelligence, Courts and Sources. 0 Comments

    The Companies Creditors Arrangement Act ( R.S.C., 1985, c. C-36 ) (CCAA) allows a plan of compromise between debtor and creditors to resolve the financial problems of a distressed company. The CCAA may only be applied where claims against the debtor company exceed $5 million. In short, the CCAA provides the insolvent company protection from the actions of creditors and allows the insolvent company to continue operations while a plan of arrangement is constructed.

    To date, CCAA information is scattered across the country in various court offices, without any centralized recording. At the outset of a recent study, Industry Canada estimated 175 cases exist; the study located 219 cases under the act. There may be more that the study did not find.

    Currently no requirements exist for debtor corporations in CCAA proceedings to report data or to publicly disclose it in a consistent way. Financial information and pension deficit information need to be reported in a consistent and accurate format. This is particularily important regarding pensions, as unfunded pension liabilities have impelled many recent CCAA filings.

    A proposed amendment to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, may force the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy to collect uniform data into a cross-country database.

    Blogs and Competitive Intelligence

    Published on February 23, 2007 in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence and Social Sites. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

    If you don’t make use of Blogs in your Competitive Intelligence research you are missing out on a potential source of vital information. However, you must learn to deal with the high noise to signal ratio.

    Blog research, at its best, is primary research as you are reading the original author. Blogs vary in quality, content, and accuracy. You need to evaluate what you find quite carefully. On the other hand, they are a superb source of gossip and rumours, which you will have to substantiate or carefully evaluate. Of course, once you find a relevant Blog it will lead you to others that may be relevant. Just follow the links, blogrolls, and tags.

    Here is my list of Blog search engines:

    Technorati Sphere Icerocket Google Kinja Livejournal Blogpulse Findory Blogdigger Feedster Plazoo Bloglines Bloogz Xanga Tailrank Clusty

    Here is my list Blog-related sites useful for finding CEO or Executive Blogs:

    CEO Blog List CEO Blog Watch Fortune 500 Business Blog