Strategic intelligence is also known as competitive intelligence (CI). Information about the present and the future is a must for companies that want not only to survive but also to develop and gain competitive advantage over its competitors. Competitive or strategic intelligence is a process of obtaining information and transforming it into knowledge for a valuable future decision-making process.

There are two types of strategic intelligence: offensive and defensive. Offensive strategic intelligence is a process of gathering information about thecompany’s external environment. Defensive strategic intelligence is focused on protecting some of the company’sown data and information that needs to remain unavailable to the public, especially to the company’s competitors. Methodsthat can be used for strategic intelligence include geopolitical monitoring, benchmarking, legal monitoring, due diligence, marketing watching and scanning, social monitoring, lobbying, stock exchange monitoring, etc.