Competitive Intelligence Spending 'to Rise Tenfold' in 5 Years

According to a study conducted by research consultancy Fuld, America's largest 1,000 firms are set to increase spending on competitive intelligence (CI) activities to at least $10 billion by 2012.

This prediction is based on data taken from the firm's recent benchmarking survey of 141 mostly large Fortune 1000-class corporations, in which respondents provided budget ranges for their CI programmes.

The $1 billion currently being spent on CI includes internal staff costs and does not include expenditure associated with using external consultants, subscriptions, or database services. The firm's President Leonard Fuld explained: 'As a means of comparison, this number was close to zero only twenty years ago, when whatever monies spent in this arena were usually buried within the market research or perhaps strategic planning budgets.'

To produce the estimate, the firm aligned each of the Fortune 1,000 sectors with the five major industry categories in its benchmark study. Fuld added that industry sectors varied widely in their CI expenditures with, for example, the pharmaceutical industry having the largest percentage of corporate intelligence programmes, compared with the financial services and legal industries which own up to the lowest budgets.

Fuld was founded in 1979 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and now also operates in central London. In addition, through affiliates and partners, the firm's global capabilities extend to Latin America, Australia, and all major Asian business centers. The company is online at www.fuld.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.