Social media networks role in managing competitive intelligence process within an organisation

Abstract

During the last few years competitive intelligence industry is attracting more and more attention from the businesses. One of the reasons for such and interest is the growth of publicly available information. Increasing popularity of the social media use exposed many organizations to higher levels of publicity. Information security is tested with every change in the use of social media networks. These changes often open up the possibilities of gaining competitive edge using such information and employing competitive intelligence strategies. Not all organizations have the resources for companywide CI system. The use of newly available tools and utilizing internal CI sources, organizations can start implementing CI at a fraction of a cost of a comprehensive CI system. On the other hand, same technologies may be the source of increased risk and loss of revenue for the organization. Authors provide the reasons and procedure for managing these risks by implementing social media use policy within the company.