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Introduction -- All organizations today perform Competitive Intelligence in some manner. Whether those activities are coordinated, efficient, or effective is another matter entirely. As experienced CI practitioners and thought leaders, the Aurora WDC staff has developed proven Best Practices and contributed to dozens of CI efforts worldwide to make them more effective and produce the bottomline results that proves their worth to management and returns improved competitive advantage for our clients enterprise.

Diagnostica.Recon is Aurora's Auditing Toolkit to evaluate our clients current and future CI plans and assess needs based upon research and experience in the field. Diagnostica forms the foundation of the CI program to precisely engineer a CI plan guaranteed to accomplish business objectives in the short term and achieve success in corporate vision in the long term.

Our auditors will examine every aspect of your existing CI processes (both the formal techniques and, more importantly, the informal processes your personnel may be using in place of them), provide you with a final report evaluating the status of your efforts with benchmarks for the program on our graded scale, and make definitive recommendations on areas for improvement. And, of course, any and all observations and analyses provided are completely confidential -- and, for your peace of mind, we insist on being subject to your most rigorous nondisclosure agreements.

Areas of Auditing -- Diagnostica will produce a process map for your organization of the complete intelligence process -- from request to collection, reporting techniques and distribution, followup and support; we look at the communications process with regard to both practical and political considerations to isolate areas of improvement; we evaluate the effectiveness of personnel and information systems for collecting primary and secondary intelligence; we survey selected areas of your organization for their various impacts on CI -- from Legal to R&D to Sales & Marketing -- to determine their level of awareness and responsiveness to ethical, counterintelligence and communications considerations; we make specific recommendations in our report for modifying policies and procedures to make your intelligence objectives a reality.

• Sales

• Research & Development

• Human Resources

• Marketing

• Planning & Management

• Finance & Accounting

• Operations & Production

• Information Systems

• Legal

• Purchasing

• Competitive Intelligence

Depending upon the client circumstances, we may need to interview other personnel in the organization as well. In addition, we will report on the status of your information systems infrastructure, hiring/firing practices, and human issues relating to CI relative to their suitability to a world-class CI process.

Objectives -- Our goals in performing the audit are threefold:

1. perform audit & summarize the current techniques being used by the organization to collect, distribute and, most importantly, act on competitive intelligence

2. develop a set of solid recommendations for enhancing the process of CI in the organization for positive bottomline performance - to compete more effectively in the marketplace and create a platform for decision-making on strategic and tactical issues as they arise

3. deliver an actionable plan for the organization to develop, implement, and evaluate the modified CI process enterprisewide

Best Practices -- What defines a global best practice? We have discovered that definition elusive, but illustrative:

• why do some firms become fearsome market leaders commanding their markets and dominating new ones when they enter; while others fail?

• how can core competencies be applied to questions of marketplace hegemony?

Diagnostica will tell you where you're at now, where you can and want to be, and show you how to get there.

Final Product -- Diagnostica's Audit Report & Best Practice Recommendations are designed using a step-by-step plan to enhance the CI function for your organization, rigorously and frankly benchmarked against our Global Best Practices Knowledge Base of case studies, experience in your industrial sector, and proven competitive intelligence techniques. Not only will you receive a status report and recommendation, but a solid, realistic implementation plan for those recommendations.

Benefits -- Our diverse client base has told us that both newly-formed as well as prestigious, experienced and well-developed CI teams and processes have realized positive bottomline results from Diagnostica. Just a few of the beneficial reasons Diagnostica has been used for auditing CI processes, among others, include:

• providing annual CI department reports to management

• benchmarking against competitors CI programs

• isolating and identifying opportunities to enhance existing processes

• initial evaluation, concept validation and deployment planning for building new CI departments

• formalization of existing informal programs

• providing a baseline Needs Assessment for modification of budgets, personnel and other resources on an ongoing basis

Timeframe -- Depending upon the size, scope, and proximity of involved units, Diagnostica usually involves up to two weeks of analysis and comparison, following a three day collection phase at your facilities. Our personnel make every possible effort to prevent interference of any kind with your daily operations, and we work around your schedule to finish quickly and completely. It will require one to five days to develop our report for delivery and presentation to you and your management staff, at which time you may wish us to return to your site for delivery, or simply receive the final product in written form.