Employee Education
Why we should include all employees in competitive intelligence's results:
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Any companywide effort must involve all employees or it will fail
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Information gathering is something that all employees do already
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Knowledgeable employees are better able to obtain goals in line with those of the company
Method to Achieve Company Wide Education
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We recognize that there are two employee classes, fixed and mobile employees, one system must reach both of these groups in a timely manner
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We also realize while disseminating information to employees is important this cannot affect their primary job
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We also recognized that long training documents are less likely to be read as thoroughly and completely as longer ones and less likely to be implemented fully
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Therefore we recommend that all communications to non-management employees from the strategic intelligence department be no more than two single sided pages.
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Communication to managerial employees will be longer but conciseness is of utmost important to make the information as valuable as possible.
Finding out about ourselves
Rationale behind
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USAirways has been floundering even before September 11. USAirways needs to find strengths and exploit them, We also need to find our weaknesses and fix them
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Given the late 1980's mergers with PSA and Piedmont Airlines and the integration of the 1990's reassessing where the company as a whole stands is fundamental to our continued success as a whole company, and not the pieces that made USAirways is fundamental to our success
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USAirways exists within a competitive environment of low-cost discount carriers, and high value luxury carriers, and no longer fits concisely within either of these categories
Information Officers
In order to achieve a consistent stream of valuable information flowing towards the Competitive Intelligence department we propose that people thorough the company be designated as information officers who as a secondary responsibility will provide a steady stream of information to the competitive intelligence department via the company intranet.
It is important to select the proper employees as information officers. Information officers should be people who have the context to realize what information is valuable to the competitive intelligence department as to not flood the company with information that cannot be utilized. Information Officers should have at least some of the following characteristics:
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Routine Exposure to events outside the company
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Process information from multiple departments within the company
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Preferably longtime personnel from all of USAirways component companies
Information Dissemination
One of the processes that the competitive intelligence department must accomplish is ensuring that the information that is gathered finds it in the hands of the employees that are able to act upon it. Therefore all of the information gathered by the competitive intelligence department should be placed in a centralized computer database that is accessible to all employees. The benefits of this method are:
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Information at the fingertips of employees when they need it
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Promotes relevancy of information delivered
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Empowers employees to find what they need on their own
We also recognize that there will be pieces of information that must be shared with all employees, to achieve this we recommend that a newsletter of irregular frequency be established. The benefits of this are:
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Irregularity promotes that all information be relevant
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Relevancy will increase the reading and retention rates, as employees will come to expect that this publication will be of high quality
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Promotes cost savings, in reduction of frequency of newsletter