A Reference Architecture for a Dynamic Competitive Intelligence Solution

Abstract

In today’s increasingly fast-paced business environment, Competitive Intelligence (CI) solutions are the key to enabling companies to stay on top of the changes in the competitive environment in which they are active, by leveraging actionable intelligence regarding the competitive landscape in an automated manner. It may come as a surprise then, that although CI is a few decades old, there is little knowledge available regarding the implementation of CI system. The aim of this thesis is to develop a modular technical architecture for such a system, serving as a reference for future implementation projects. We perform a comprehensive literature review and exploratory interviews with companies and industry specialists, identifying the main requirements as well as the architectural fragments proposed using a coding technique based on grounded theory. We then construct a modular technical architecture, which could serve as a reference for CI implementation projects. A single use case analysis is conducted by implementing and creating and evaluating a prototype for a company active in the maritime & offshore industry. Lastly the architecture is evaluated by a group of experts and refined in a feedback loop.