Human intelligence remains critical for competitive intelligence because key insights live only in people's heads, not online. Win-loss interviews and conversations with sales reps and customers reveal what you won't find on G2 Crowd or social media. The best approach combines direct conversations with digital sources, not replacing one with the other.
Chapters
You have HUMINT, you have SOCINT, and also, you know, human intelligence, social media intelligence. We have OSINT, open source intelligence. So Kai has an interesting follow-up question that he's sharing. So in times of increasing digitization, right, is the human side, the HUMINT, right, getting even more interesting for CI? So now, how is the effect of digitalization on the way you gather intelligence more or less human, more or less SOC Mint, more or less OSINT. How is your balance on the intelligence collection?
Yeah, I wouldn't say there is a ratio between them, but I would say human, the human side of things, it's really important and it will remain important all the time in competitive intelligence for the simple reason that sometimes people don't tweet it, they don't write about it, they don't post anything on social media about it. It's just in the heads of the sales rep, the customer support, the customer himself or herself. And that intelligence, we can— we, we need to get it anyway. So it's our role to get to those people, to sit with those people, and to have the conversation. Primary intelligence, because it won't— we, we won't find it any, any way, uh, differently. So it won't end up in social media or something like that. So it's more content that we can get from social media and other spaces, even metaverse in the future. Maybe we'll be able to get some intelligence there because people will start to post information or share things, uh, there.
It's a lot over there and not here. You feel, you feel that we'll get to the point where the world really transitions from the real world into the metaverse and they talk over there and not here?
Or I, I think it's, it will be a mix of everything, but the idea here is to get intelligence where it is, and some people will be more comfortable sharing in this format Some people will just be comfortable sharing around a coffee or a beer. Some people will share it on social media and create content about it and talk to their colleagues. And the others will just try to leverage anything new to, to do it. If there is a new social media or metaverse or etc., some of them will go there. So, uh, we have to follow the intelligence where we can find it. That's my point. It's not one or another. I think it's a mix of everything, but the human side is really important and it will remain important in intelligence gathering. Just when we take win-loss analysis, for example, we get so much information about why the customer decided to buy our product or not. And this information, well, we will not find it in G2 Crowd or something like that. Sometimes if they are not happy, they will post a review and we can find it there. But most of the time, no, they will just be silent switchers. But we have the duty to get that intelligence wherever it is. So yeah, I hope it helps.
