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Company Strategy Mapping (CSM) involves breaking down how your competitors create value for their shareholders and customers. It is definitely not an easy thing to do, but I have attached a couple of diagrams that will give you a good starting point on what to think about. The first diagram breaks down a company into four major areas (financial, customer, internal, and information). Your job is to fill in the areas where the company is exceptional. For example, Walmart would have its Supply Chain Management practices highlighted in the Internal Operations area. When finished, you should have in one simple diagram a visualization of how this company competes in this industry. Adapted from Kaplan & Norton The second diagram maps out all the players involved in getting the final product to the end user. The goal of this diagram is to note to whom the profits and power flow. By understanding the power dynamics of the supply chain, you can use it to better understand the position of competitors and your own company. Usually companies will be interested in strategies that allow them to gain power within their supply chain. These two simple diagrams help one better understand their industry, competitors, and themselves. Keep in mind they are only one piece of the puzzle. To truly understand the competitive environment, you need to do the full analysis.

The power of understanding one's market, company, and the competitive landscape is often underestimated and forgotten in strategy. Actionable competitive intelligence will help a company better anticipate their competitor's actions, responses to their strategies, and predict the likelihood of success of their strategies. There are many activities of Competitive Intelligence. Here I hope to layout some key components of a competitive intelligence framework that companies can perform to better understand their industry, company, and competitors - A Strategic Industry Evaluation. I want to start out by saying that I have not created the framework; the ideas can be found in books and over the web. What I am taking is my learnings from an excellent MBA Competitive Intelligence course and presenting them in a manner that I feel is most understandable. Competitive Industry Evaluation Step 1: Industry Analysis You must know your environment before you can ever know its inhabitants.

• Industry Structure - Porter 5 (7) Forces

Most people know Porter's 5 forces framework. I believe the framework provides a solid static picture from which to start the rest of the analysis. I won't describe it here because the web has a wealth of information.

• Value Chain Analysis

Porter's 5 forces shows were the power is distributed in the industry and the Value Chain Analysis identifies where the money goes. The goal of a Value Chain Analysis is to map out all players of the supply chain of the industry product up to the consumer and determine how each participant makes a profit.

Example of a Value Chain Analysis

Step 2: Company Analysis For your company and each major competitor perform the following:

• Company Strategy Map

A company strategy map complements a supply chain analysis. It breaks down the strategies a company employs to create value. I have dedicated a separate post to the subject here.

• Supply Chain Analysis

A company's operations can be broken down into a number of key activities. A supply chain analysis identifies the strategies or initiatives that a company employs in each of these areas. My post on Company Strategy Mapping goes into greater depth on this analysis.

• Resources Processes Values (RPV) Analysis

RPV helps identify a company's capabilities. Resources refers to the company assets that it can leverage to succeed. They include tangible and intangible assets that a company controls or has available to them (ie, deep talent pool in area of operations can be a resource). Processes refers to the processes that a company uses to maximize its use of its assets. A good question to ask to identify processes is "what does this company do well?" Values are the corporate principles of where it wants to succeed. Values include a company's mission statement and its goals.

• SWOT Analysis

SWOT identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a company. There is plenty of material on the web on SWOT. I think it is best to view SWOT in terms of internal environment and external environment. The strengths and weaknesses refer to the internal capabilities of a company. The opportunities and threats refer to external challenges a company faces.

• Four Corners Analysis - Drivers+Assumptions+Current Strategies+Capabilities = Future Strategy

Four Corners Analysis uses all the above tools to create snapshot of a company's capabilities and motivations. By identifying the four corners (Drivers, Assumptions, Current Strategies, and Capabilities), one should improve its prediction capabilities of the company's future strategy and how it will attempt to accomplish it.

Drivers are what motivates this company. It consists of the Values identified in the RPV analysis, an understanding of the underlying motivations of their current strategy, and the personality of their leadership. Understanding what your competitor thinks about 24-7 will help you predict the future actions and responses.

Assumptions require some thought around the current strategies and values of a company. All company actions have assumptions about the shape of the competitive environment or market that drive their decisions. These are what you must identify. To know these is to know your company's or competitor's blind spots.

Current Strategies identify the key strategies used by a company to compete in the market. Use your Company Strategy Maps and Supply Chain Analysis to help build this category. Company Current Strategies should align with its Drivers, Assumptions, and Capabilities.

Capabilities are the resources available to a company to compete in this market. This is where you should use your SWOT analysis and RPV Resources and Processes to create a complete picture of the weapons that this company has to compete in the market.

Future Strategy is your prediction of what the company will do given the competitive environment and the four corners you mapped out above. Generally, a Future Strategy answers a specific question like "How will Verizon compete against an iPhone enhanced AT&T?" The answer can reference the 4P's - Product, Placement, Price, and Promotion - to create picture of how this company will compete. The Future Strategy should flow easily from the four corners.

There you have it. A framework to help you understand your market and predict competitor behavior. First, you build a picture of the industry - who has the power and who makes money. Second, you perform a series of analyses that feed into the four corner analysis that is used to predict competitor responses. Keep in mind that no company remains static for long. Therefore, company profiles should be regularly updated as new information becomes available. I would love to hear your feedback. Let me know if you have any other tools that work for you.