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Case Ciba

Harmonizing Intelligence Activities in a Global Specialty Chemicals Company

Interview with Jens Thieme, Head of Market & Competitive Intelligence at Ciba

Jens, please first tell us a little bit about Ciba as a company and its Market Intelligence challenges.
“Ciba is a leading specialty chemicals company that employs 14,000 people worldwide. In 2006, the company generated sales of CHF 6.4 billion.

Our traditional challenges in MI/CI could be highlighted as follows:

• Limited sharing of market studies and competitive analysis, and the lack of a unified source for all market information
• Cost redundancies due to non-coordinated information purchases
• People using excessive amounts of time on searching for information
• Lack of focus on MI development under the pressure to generate more sales”

So it was evident that “something had to be done”. How was management involved in the development, and what happened next?

“A newly hired Chief Marketing & Sales Officer was mandated to reorganize the entire corporate marketing and sales operations at Ciba, including Market and Competitive Intelligence.

In order to gain further support executives needed to be convinced of the expected benefits. We put together a business case with the following elements:

• Major improvement themes (outlook on improved competitiveness, increased efficiency, saved cost, speeding up idea to market)
• Business benefits (improved market and customer focus, opportunities identification, minimizing investment risks)
  
  

You then decided to launch a common intelligence platform for the entire organization’s use?

“Yes, we recognized that the availability of market information is the very backbone of any further intelligence development, so we decided to fix this first. We established the Ciba Intelligence Plaza for a corporate user base of 600 people. The tool is based on Global Intelligence Alliance’s Intelligence Plaza™ software, and content is being produced to the tool by both GIA analysts and by Ciba internally.

We subsequently found some of the business unit managers to turn from opponents of extended intelligence efforts to strong believers in the potential impact, once they understood how much they could be supported through MI without spending any own of their scarce resources.”


In your experience, how do you tackle the challenges that one comes across along the road of MI development?

“Working with different individuals, one will step into many backyards. Respecting everyone’s own interests and agendas will create buy-in, as will the support from top management, and the strength of one’s internal network.

Time is an issue that needs to be factored in: Any project that aims at serious improvements across organizational boundaries tends to end up being much bigger as originally anticipated.

Finally, where you need people’s involvement, make it as easy as possible for them.”


So Jens, you are now in the process of rolling out the Ciba Intelligence Plaza for the corporate audience around the world. What do you see as the next steps?

“We now need to close educational gaps and extend our array of research and analytical techniques. Maximized impact through world class intelligence production, and executives who get used to gauging their business decisions based on that much improved intelligence are logical next goals for us.”

Many thanks Jens, and the best of luck with your efforts in building the Market & Competitive Intelligence operation at Ciba!