Competitive intelligence practices adopted by commercial banks in Kenya

Abstract

Competitive Intelligence (CI) is both a process and a product. The process of Competitive Intelligence is the action of gathering, analyzing, and applying information about products, domain constituents, customers, and competitors for the short term and long term planning needs of an organization. The product of Competitive Intelligence is the actionable output ascertained by the needs prescribed by an organization. Competitive Intelligence is an ethical and legal business practice. The intelligence process consists of four major parts: decide what questions need to be answered; gather and process relevant information; analyze the information relative to the questions to be answered and disseminate the results to the people who need it. Currently, there are forty-four commercial banks in Kenya according to the CBKs statistics on its website. Thirty-five of the banks, most of which are small to medium sized, are locally owned. The study sought to determine the competitive intelligence practices adopted by commercial banks in Kenya and also to determine the effect of CI practices on organizational performance. The study a survey design was used and the research problem was studied through the use of a descriptive survey. The population of study consisted of all the 44 commercial banks that were dully registered with Central Bank of Kenya and the researcher used primary data (questionnaires) to carry out the study. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and was presented in percentages, tabulations, means and other means other central tendencies. Tables were used to summarize respondents for further analysis and facilitate comparison. The study summary found that, CI function in most banks has developed through planned action and most employees are not extensively involved in the process. Also CI function is developed through project teams consisting of both internal and external employees. The study recommends that CI function to be undertaken, a plan of action should be established that addresses the mandatory requirements for the operations. CI department should be on the basis of what output per resources allocated in obtained.