15 May 2003
Shell Companies in Nigeria (SCiN) have held their first workshop on Competitive Intelligence (CI) and appointed a "Core Team" that will work to embed this emerging area of business across the organisations.
The 15-member body of mostly senior management staff will spearhead the enthronement of a CI culture in SCiN and try to ensure that it becomes a functional business tool.
At the same time, SPDC's Head, Scouting and Liaison, Tony Enyia was named SCiN Competitive Intelligence Co-ordinator and efforts are underway to adapt SCiN CI charter from the Shell Group version. Shell Nigeria is also to be linked up with the Group CI Network.
The two-day workshop held in Lagos marked watershed in efforts to introduce CI in SCiN.
According to Shell Bulletin, Competitive Intelligence is not another term for industrial espionage. Rather, it is a proactive tool by which SPDC could understand the dynamics of the business, customer needs and government policies and pronouncements, using the insight to grow the business and deliver good returns on shareholder's and joint venture investments.
Declaring the workshop open, deputy Managing Director, Joshua Odofia said: "Intelligence is the radar that serves to alert management to threats and opportunities and to our comparative performance vis-à-vis the competitors."
Tony and Group Intelligence Coordinator Shaun McCarthy co-facilitated the event, taking the 27 participants through key topics such as business intelligence, EP cost scenarios, Shell's Cost Leadership, Shell's core competitive benchmarking, creating an intelligence capability, as well as the ethical and legal boundaries of CI practice. Some key performance enablers were identified for the effective take-off of CI namely, executive capacity (people issues), a structured intelligence gathering machine, people, process and performance, establishing a CI culture for staff and making it a scorecard item as from next year.
Tony said on the way forward: "We intend to commence the process of CI data gathering Industry and Group-wide - for benchmarking. These will centre on costs of exploration and production, operational performance, reserves, procurement and construction.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2003 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
