Supporting Competitive Intelligence with Linked Enterprise Data

Abstract

Competitive Intelligence is a process which involves retrieving, analyzing and packaging information to offer a final product that responds to the intelligence needs of a particular decision maker or community of decision makers. Internet-based information sources are becoming increasingly important in this process because most of the contents available on the Web are available free of charge. In this work the following research question was addressed: What are the concepts and technologies related to linked data which allow gathering, integration and sharing of information to support competitive intelligence? To answer this question, firstly, the literature was reviewed in order to outline the conceptual framework. Next, some competency questions were defined through a focus group in a study object. Finally, DB4Trading tool was built as a prototype able to validate the conceptual framework. Results point out that adoption of Semantic Web technologies enable to obtain the data needed for the analysis of external environments. Besides that, results indicate that companies use Semantic Web technologies to support its operations despite consider these technologies as complex. This work adds to the decision-making process, specially in the context of competitive intelligence. This work also contributes to reducing costs to obtain information beyond organization boundaries by using Semantic Web technologies.