1. Key intelligence topic (KIT) revision and knowledge: the analyst must have a deep knowledge about KITs which are his responsibility. Knowing the main players, trends, gurus… and be able to discern between relevant and trivial information for the company. Additionally, from time to time the analyst must review the adequacy of these KITs and how are these defined in each time adjusting to the changeable situation of his company.

2. Information Sources review: the review of information sources is a task to perform from time to time but of a great importance. Access to information and the available number of information sources has grown and continues increasing in a way that the analyst must keep an eye on the appearance of those new sources which can provide information of interest. It is important to review the sources every time there are changes in the KITs.

3. Sources filtering: after reviewing sources the analyst should add new interesting sources and eliminate those which are not. But the level of information available makes that, besides being strict with the sources, the analyst must filter the information that receives from each of them (specially from the most active) to limit the received amount and not be overwhelmed.

4. Information search: previous tasks are performed with some regularity, but the search of information of interest is part of the analyst’s everyday life. Reviewing the received information and selecting that significant is a time consuming task but that is the key to his job.

5. Sharing information: in some cases it happens that the information received is of interest, bur is outside the KITs under his responsibility. In these cases, the analyst must identify another analyst who sends and shares the information. He`s going to analyze and disseminate the information.

6. Analysis and putting in value of his knowledge: after detecting the information of interest, the analyst must analyze why is that information interesting and put it in the context of the company to ease the interpretation. In this step the analyst can enrich the information putting it into context.

7. Dissemination: the last step of his work, once the information of interest has already been analyzed and valued, is the dissemination. The final objective of the CI is to generate an appropriate context for decision-making and the analyst has to make knowledge reach the people who have to make decision.

If you want to train as a CI Analyst, or have doubts about how to launch a CI Unit, you can contact us for help. Also, you can try free professional software like INNGUMA requesting a demo.