Analysis by any other name......

In the world of competitive intelligence (CI), various theories on analysis and benchmarking have helped drive company decisions.  Working well in the corporate world of Proctor & Gamble, General Electric and IBM; what can these types of analyses do for law firms??

How can firms apply benchmarking analysis when the definition of benchmarking is " the process of finding out who is best and trying to learn from their success?" Most firms believe they are the best and everyone in the profession can learn from them.  But dig a little deeper into Trend, Predictive, Demographic, Social Network or the familiar SWOT analysis and there are interesting parallels and applications that can help law firms.

1. Trend or "change over time" analysis- firms need to monitor areas of business trends...local, state, regional or national to find out what economies are booming and which ones can potentially go bust.  Firms with substantial healthcare law practices need to follow the ever changing landscape from the Affordable Healthcare Act  to insurance exchanges  and beyond....CI can help with the filtering and tracking the mountains of information. Who are the major players benefiting from private and public health exchanges, are they clients? Do we want them as clients? If so, how does the firm approach them as potential clients? If not, are there other secondary players who maybe potential clients.

2. Predictive or "future gazing" analysis- foretelling the future is not the main focus of this analysis.  Granted, the theory behind predictive analysis is "looking at a situation and what may or may not happen to this situation within some future time period."  But what law firms have not added laterals hires or more summer law clerks based on a new or existing client's business venture or expansion forecast??  This is predictive analysis.

3. Social Network Analysis (SNA)- describes relationships between individuals, groups or organizations. A familiar example is LinkedIn.com.  Using this second largest social network in the world (Facebook is the largest) in CI research is popular topic for SCIP.org and many blogs.  A January 24, 2012 posting on the SCIP website, "How to use LinkedIn for CI" suggested studying company personnel & hiring trends of competitors.  Look for patterns, relationships.

4. Demographic Analysis- is the examination of specific segments on existing and/or potential customers.  Firms can target small businesses in a particular area  i.e. potential clients in the local business "incubator" community.

5. SWOT Analysis- as discussed in an earlier post is " a strategic methodology of a company or organization --Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats."   Yes, they can be too broad and used too frequently, but for many organizations they are a start-a beginning in the competitive discussion.

The SWOT- part 2 : a look @ US legal services

Legal services, for this SWOT,  will include publishing, online services and providers.  The ever-expanding world of legal services is an area all information professionals, analysts and managers are dealing with every work day.  Let's look at the industry in terms of SWOT terminology.

1. Strengthens-  Many major online legal service providers ("OLSP") grew from strong print brands resulting from years in this medium.  West Publishing alone has been in the print legal business for over 100 years. 

As a result, OLSPs have established markets- US Legal, Law School and Government /Business sectors with unique customer offerings.

2. Weaknesses- Sometimes a failure to see change and innovation and act quickly.  Can be driven by "old school" business concepts such as exclusive licensing agreements and numerous restrictions, long term agreements or variations there of...i.e. LMA (Library Maintenance Agreements)

How many years went into developing competing products, West KM and Lexis Search Advantage?

In the meantime, other business intelligence vendors have move onto "big data" analytical tools which are working to cut across disciplines and industries to provide ease of use and competitive pricing models for future customers including those in legal markets.

3. Opportunities- Technology has been the OSLPs' lighting rod  from dedicated red Lexis terminals (anyone remember those?) to CD towers to E Books and wireless access.  Publishers have used these emerging technologies to attempt to gain ground with their customers over the years.

LexisNexis, Westlaw and Wolters Kluwer and now BNA/Bloomberg continue to partner with new companies offering specialization product lines.

4. Threats- These very unconventional start up service companies continue to gain acceptance within legal consumer markets. As referenced in the Weakness section of this SWOT, these cutting edge vendors are gaining ground. 

Who and what are these new online legal services providers??  Names like Justia.com, FastCase and Legal Zoom represent this new crop of BI vendors.  In an interesting article from the Information Today website dated September 1, 2011, "Upstate legal services gain traction", by Paula J. Hane ; the author paints several interesting current and future scenarios for the legal services online markets.



This is a very broad analysis on the legal services industry.....granted, SWOTs have been criticized for being too simple, too general in focus..... and there were probably many factors left out but I just wanted to illustrate this type of analysis and how competitive factors are always in play.

Comments are welcomed.

Disruptive Innovations and CI

What do the telephone, the photocopier, the personal computer and Bloomberg's recent purchase of Bureau of National Affairs have in common?  They are considered by CI experts to be examples of "disruptive innovations."

Defined as " a new dimension of performance compared to existing innovations." ( from Dr. Christensen' s Seeing What's Next)  I have always interpreted that as "some process or product that can totally change a landscape." Forcing all existing and future players to act or behave differently.

This area of analysis was recently in the news when it was revealed that one of the top 10 books recommended by Steve Jobs was Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma : an  analysis on disruptive innovation.  His following treatise, Seeing What's Next, takes analysis a step further and discusses innovation as a method to predict industry change. Something CI professionals constantly do battle with.

Much has been written about the telephone and the personal computer; we all know how these technologies have changed our business and personal practices and preferences---but what about Bloomberg's recent acquisition of BNA?

Bloomberg wanted into the legal information market; it can now build upon its News, Business/Finance and Government markets/presence by adding a major established Legal "piece." Several years ago,  Bloomberg showed it was serious about the legal market with its launch of "Bloomberg Law." The legal research module integrates legal news, research, case docketing and regulatory functions.

With the major "legal piece" including BNA premier tax and regulatory content, Bloomberg may soon become #4 when added to the "Big 3" (Thomson/West, Wolters Kluwer and Lexis/Nexis) list of legal publishers. Now we have potentially 4 major competitors vying for our money and attention.  That could be very disputive.  Here's hoping there will be saving for all customers....

Law Firms' CI Environment

At a recent local SCIP presentation, the speaker challenged all attendees to visually describe the role of competitive intelligence in your industry.  The theme of the presentation was "Competitive Intelligence in the trenches."

The presentation slide linked below is showing the immediate and secondary forces/issues affecting law firms in their competitive intelligence environment.  The immediate forces close to the organization are dealing with old and new clients; while secondary or indirect issues can be legal economics.


Click on link below for the visual.  Comments are welcome.

www.scribd.com/doc/64852623/CIENVIRONMENT

What is a SWOT?

I'm sure all those bus admin majors out there will think this post is elementary; but a lot of information and research professionals may not. Again,several definitions have emerged.

SWOT #1 definition- a strategic planning tool and method. (http://www.analysisexample.com/)

SWOT #2 definition- an evaluation of available information concerning the business environment in order to identify internal strengthens and weaknesses and external threats and opportunities. (SCIP website)

SWOT #3 definition- aka "situational analysis" or competitor profiling or intelligence analysis (when applied to competitors) (SCIP website)


Try to interpret your firm's SWOT.  Could be fun, could be a challenge.  This information is useful when responding to new business, for example.  CI and SWOTs can help firms see how to best position their strengths while playing up to weaknesses of competing firms.

Definitions

After recently having a "cart before the horse" moment; I realized I had not provided any definitions for competitive intelligence.; but after looking on the web and CI sites and seeing a lot of variations...here goes........

• From the SCIP website: "CI is a necessary, ethical business discipline for decision making based on understanding the competitive environment."
• From the web:"the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization."
• From Yvonne Davis: "CI is a systemic process of gathering and analyzing information about competitor activities and general business trends."

See a short list of more definitions @ the right under "Definitions"

The role of Legal Analytics

                                                   

The term “analytics” has been described as “data that helps companies track business trends” and the “sophisticated analysis of data.”  Business analytics is termed the “technique that makes it easier to visualize and  analyze business data to support decision making.”  Legal analytics products from leading business and legal research companies like Dun & Bradstreet, LexisNexis and West Publishing combine the legal parameters of law practices with data analysis to provide firms with potential client lists, litigation and trial analysis and geographical growth trends.

LexisNexis- this legal research company in the suburbs of Dayton OH, was the first legal subscription searchable online service to offer full text US and local case law in the early 1970s.  The non legal or business subscription research service, Nexis, started in the late 1970s.  Information offered in Nexis includes company financials and individual “libraries” such as Hoover’s Industy Reports, Investext Reports, Standard & Poor Profiles and SEC company filings.

Dun & Bradstreet- a business information company founded in the 19th century as a credit reporting service; DNB added company information with its early acquisition of Moody’s Corporation and R. H Donnelley.  After spinning off these companies in 1999-2000, DNB today is the primary resource for detailed business information on privately held as well as publicly traded companies.  Subscribers have access to over 100 million US and international corporations and not for profit organizations. 

Proprietary Applications:

LexisNexis’ AdVantage- online access to individual company and industry information with litigation/trial history, deal & merger data and  legal representation information provided in a report format.  Subscribers can choice from several modules.  LexisNexis states the application has over 45 million public and privately held companies.

Thomson/West’s Firm 360- the competitor to AdVantage, Firm 360, has also several modules such as Deal and Litigation. These modules provide trial history as well as corporate as well as mergers and acquisitions information on US companies.  Firm 360 states the database of over 12 million companies.

Reference USA- an online subscription database, Reference USA, is a division of infoUSA, a print business directory service located in Omaha , Nebraska.  Most US public libraries offer this service to library patrons.  This database contains over 14 million business and over 100 million residential entries covering the US and Canada.  The US portion of Reference USA can be searched using over 20 unique “data elements” ( i.e. location, sales figures and number of employees).

DNB’s Selectory- a “prospecting” database from DNB’s Sales and Marketing Solutions division, Selectory contains over 14 million business records and over 1 million Canadian businesses.  Subscribers can create reports based on geographical locations, company size, SIC/NAICS and industry.  Information can be downloaded into Excel or into PDF reports. Other modules include corporate family tree and mailing label formatting.

Note: starting in late 2011, Selectory will become part of Hoover's with increased coverage and new interface.  Hoover's is part of Dun & Bradstreet.