Corporate Spying -- Bach ke Rehna re.....

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

We all are aware of various brands competing with each other like Coke-Pepsi,
Hero Honda - Bajaj in the motorbike division. The both competitors come up with
something or the other to compete with.

If I say, think of any Indian bikes..if am not wrong majority of people would
think around two main brands. Any Indian soft drink…..again may be your
thoughts would revolve around two brands.

If Bajaj will come up with a new bike ‘Discover’ where Jackie Chan starts
flying in the air once he drives the bike….then Hero Honda will come up with
a new model in same segment. if Pepsi comes up with some thing with in 2-3 days we see Coke also has something similar to offer.

If Sprite is hiring Sania Mirza for promotions 7up hires Malikka Sheravat.

Another example is of Mobile companies. Do you ever thought of How can mobile
company like AirTel, Hutch, Idea can come up with same type of mobile scheme on same day or within 1 or 2 day difference. Does this companies have mutual
understanding to launch same kind of scheme???

All this which we read and see can be termed as corporate war, and there is one
undercover job behind to all this thing which is common to all, that’s Consultant.

My topic for todays speech is - CORPORATE SPY: THE CONSULTANTS

If Bajaj is coming up with a new bike in 110cc segment how can Hero Honda come
up with a similar bike in the same segment that to both hitting the market with
a difference of 1 or 2 weeks.

Don’t you think it requires more then a week or two to plan , produce n launch a
bike??? How does these companies come to know what is going to happen or what the other competitor is planning to do.

Now arrives the role of the consultants who also work as corporate SPIES.

A consultant is a professional who provides advice in a particular area of expertise such as accountancy, the environment, technology, law, human
resources, marketing, medicine, finance, public affairs, communication,
engineering or waste management.

Different industries have different consultants.


The main difference between a consultant and a ‘normal’ expert is that the consultant is not himself employed with his client, but instead is in business for himself or for a consultancy firm, usually with multiple and changing clients.

Today it is very common that these companies hire consultancies for spying on the other companies or the competitors to beat the competition.
This process of getting the information could be ethical or unethical.

To explain it better suppose company A has a set of people who are distributing its product all over India. Now a company B which is new , wants to distribute its product all over India but doest know how to do it.

Now company B will hire a consultant who will find out the distributors of A, who are best in the business. Now why company A will tell about its distributors to company B. Now the SPYs or the consultants they contact company A saying that they want to make a demand analysis report of their company. They visit the company and its divisions. For demand analysis they ask 100 questions like turnover, future plans, market demand, etc in between these 100 questions they take the list of the distributors too.

Now the SPIES they contact the distributors saying they are about to launch a
company and they need distributors for it.To get the price details they ask 100
questions like..currently which projects you are handling…approx at what
price??

Now the the SPY has seen the both sides of the coin.

All this data is sold to the the company B which later contacts distributors at
attractive prices. And what do you think will company B will be in a better
position to convince distributors.

This was an example how consultants work as a spy. They are there in every
industry and they work in a similar way. May be this is not ethical but this is
being practiced by every company to be best in the business.

Consultants are the professionals who work for various kinds of work but
currently the corporate spy is the consultant which you might consider as
your friend but they can turn the tables before you notice.


Source : http://ravithesun.teks.co.in/

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