Management Functions Particularities In The Competitive Intelligence Process.

The manager is the key element in the process of information analysis inside a firm, especially because this process is used to make vast decisions, from strategic decisions to the most detailed tactical movements. It is a process that can reach all company's departments and make them more efficient. The process' success and its completion in order to create intelligence depends, first of all, on the manager's ability to carry out the five competitive intelligence process activities and to act accordingly at each stage. Also, the manager's response speed can make the difference between the success of an action to capitalize on the results of information analysis and its failure. Therefore, the paper will emphasize the importance of management functions and, especially, their particularities regarding the information analysis process and the competitive intelligence cycle. In the end, those particularities might be more important than the process itself, since the quality of the result depend drastically on the way tasks are distributed and managed. Last but not least, the manager should be able to make the distinction between regular activities and the ones defining the competitive intelligence process, in order to reach to desired objectives in an efficient manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]