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                              BUSINESS AND STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE
                                                                                                    © Daniel Pichoud 2002
 
Business and strategic intelligence is the intelligence of  situations that is  the understanding of one's environment and of the possibilities of action  and not the gathering of information that is done by a secret service as people often wanted to translate it into French. Let us not fall however into the other-worldliness, all information which one can lay out contributes obviously to the understanding of a situation. Each person in charge or each specialist in a field (of action or knowledge) must devote a sufficient share of his activity to:

- data-gathering
- data expoitation
- distribution of information
-  protection of information

The person should be trained to be able to use data-processing tools and to have a methodology to integrate and exploit information coming from all available sources.

Ignorance can be very expensive thus it is appropriate to  make the needed investment in time and money to gather useful information preliminary to action. That can be summarized in two words: equipment and training and in two attitudes watching for and sharing of information taking care of the necessary protection of certain information and of the sources of that information.

My personal know how developed since my departure of the DGA relates primarily to the configuration of the data-processing tool and the methodology of using this tool for the collection, the processing and the  management of information which can be collected on the Internet. I conduct personal research on the subject.
 

Exploitation of information available on Internet
Internet it is today and will be more and more a window open on the whole world.
90% of the external information necessary to the life of a company is already available for people who can find it on the Internet. Sounds, photographs, films, recordings, scientific and technical documents, conferences proceedings, keynotes of high ranking officials from administration and industry, laws and regulations and the majority of the administrative forms are or will be available on line and often in real time on the Internet. In addition medias on line are increasingly numerous; radios, TV channels, daily newspapers and specialized reviews in the whole world broadcast their contents on the Internet.
To lay out in an economic way  these informations and documents  is possible after a specific training.

Training
A suitable training is necessary to seek and over all  find useful information on the Internet. To quickly find in the vastness of the Web the sites the most interesting for the company, to record, classify and disseminate the useful information  and make it checked  by the inhouse experts, this can be learnt.
The basic tool is a computer well configured to have an effective and fast working tool for accessing to open information in real time and one's need to acquire the methodology to use it properly. Let us stress that this tool and this methodology can be used for the management of all available information.