Sales of large quantities of stock or the sale of assets and equipment of the business itself outside the regular course of business are considered a sale “in bulk”. The Bulk Sales Act is designed to protect the creditors of a business owner by requiring the owner to follow the procedures of the Act for sales outside the regular course of business.

If a buyer wishes to purchase the assets and equipment of a business, the seller “in bulk” must provide an affidavit stating that all creditors have been paid, or they will be paid from the proceeds of the sale.  In some cases the buyer pays an assigned trustee and creditors of the business may wish to waive their rights in which case the proceeds are paid.

A ‘Bulk Sales search‘ determines if a bulk sales affidavit has been filed with the relevant Ontario Superior Court of Justice office.

The Private Investigator (PI)

If you are interested in an Ontario business’s assets, debts, cash flow, and general financial condition, then a a Bulk Sale Act search is an important search.  It may tell you if the business is failing or if it has suffered a set-back.  You may learn of an abandoned line or the sale of a production facility.  You may learn of a legal action in another jurisdiction by contacting or researching the other parties to the bulk sale. Any sale that indicates that creditors will be paid from the proceeds of the sale may indicate a judgment that is being satisfied or it may be part of the settlement of a claim.

Operational Risk arises from:

• inadequate or failed processes and controls,
• people
• systems
• external events
• contractual obligations
• compliance issues
• lawfare

Lawfare is the most interesting aspect of this type of work. Lawfare is a form of asymmetric warfare that is waged via the courts with the intention of damaging the firm. Special interest groups, radicals, and competitors will use this to create financial damage and create ill will towards the targeted company.

The Investigator’s task is usually to identify the funding sources and relationship of the plaintiff to individuals and groups who would benefit from the use of this tactic.

Wiess also makes the point that newspapers publish

1. what their editors view as of interest to their readership
2. news when they have sufficient information for a story.

This is important for competitive intelligence, business analysis and common sense. Without this realisation people are likely to jump to incorrect conclusions based on what they read. The only way to read a newspaper is to question each story and ask why it was published – to understand the hidden agenda.

When there is insufficient information or where it is dangerous for journalists to publish a news story, then however potentially important that news story is, it won’t get published. That is why so few bad news stories highlighting lack of freedom, atrocities and so on are published on the autocracies that rule much of the world. Instead, news focuses on countries where there is a relative freedom to publish, and journalists can report on what is happening unimpeded by the authorities.

If you are interested in how bias, propaganda, and politics influence the news, then please read this article.

1. Create a Google account while being discrete with the information you put in the profile.
2. Log on to your Google account and in the top left of the screen go to more then down to even more and select Alerts, which appears as the first link on the More Google Products page. Set up a number of these alerts for “news” and “blogs” based on your search terms. Set each of these to “as-it-happens” to e-mail you with a link to the article.
3. Set up your smart phone to receive these alerts, and code the incoming messages with a special sound. You’ll then get a specific sound on your smart phone with each Google Alert.
4. Establish a  Google Reader account. Subscribe to all the blogs you can find on your topics of interest. Google Reader includes a search bar to help search through the dross to find the good stuff. You now have an online central location from which you can manage your information intake.
5. Over time, add more and more RSS feeds.  Intelligence agencies have them, and so should you.  You will be surprised Google Reader and the Google Alerts you will consistently outperform major news organizations in bring actionable intelligence to your attention. The may give you a competitive edge.
6. Check your favorite blogs and and those that they are linking to consistently. Add these RSS feeds to your reader. Check the blog rolls of the blogs to which you subscribe  and add all of their RSS feeds to your reader. To vet these new sources, use the reader’s search facility.

R for reliability. The basic truthfulness or accuracy of the information you are evaluating.

I  for the importance of the data based upon its releveance

C  for the cost of your possible reactions or actions relating to the information

E  for the effectiveness of your  actions based upon this information. Would actions based upon this information solve the problems you face?

This format is useful for summarizing collected data and for analyzing how you might apply the data in a broad range of situations.

PS:

Just remember, as the old pessimist philosopher Arnold Schopenhauer stated, “The truth will set you free . . . but first it will make you miserable.”

For Competitive Intelligence research, I use TinEye  to search for images used by the target company to find where they are buying advertising space and to find affiliated sites.

We make it easy for you to subscribe to each category and the most popular through  their RSS feeds and Twitter accounts.

The thing that interests me most is the search facility that works quite well, especially for finding Tweets that include company names.

Intelligence Positions in Industry

Even if you can get past the spook factor, though, there is still a perception by many businesses that they do not need intelligence. My technique in these cases is to ask the managers and executives I deal with, “Who in your company has it as a fundamental part of their job — as part of their job description — to systematically examine all the factors relevant to your company’s success but outside your company’s control, integrate those factors as necessary and provide estimates of how those factors will change over time in order to support your planning processes?”

The answers vary, of course. Some companies have market analysts but they are not tasked to look at the competition. Others have competitive intelligence and market analysts but clearly have other intelligence needs that aren’t being met (like the company with a global presence that needs to understand if its employees are likely to get kidnapped or the company who transports critical raw materials in ships that travel off the coast of Somalia…).

Even if all the various needs are covered, no one is integrating the reports, coordinating the activities or providing meaningful estimates about how conditions are likely to change. Some places have even told me that performing this function is “everyone’s job” but I just laugh (I can do that because I am a professor and not a consultant).

No matter what the answer, the discussion leads to the follow-on question: “Don’t you think it would be useful to have someone who does all this for you?” The answer is always, “Yes” but it still translates only slowly, if at all, into intelligence jobs.

Strategic Research

This is to determine the best course of action. For example, in which direction to drive.

Tactical Research

This is how to achieve the best course of action. This is deciding which road to take. This is also about the essential details to reaching your strategic goal.

This might seem obvious, but I’m forever being reminded that it isn’t.