Competitive Intelligence is equal to Business Intelligence,
• Competitive Intelligence is part of Business Intelligence,
• Competitive Intelligence is understood as relatively separate information system.
The first view is mainly encountered in American literature, where the two concepts are understood as synonyms.
The second view presents, that CI is part of the parent category Business Intelligence, which is understood as a
group of resources and ideas supporting all areas of management decision-making with an emphasis on improving
the awareness of managers at all levels of management. It contains information that is not necessarily competitive
and includes mainly news and information work, which is within the company. This view is shared by Zheng et al.
(2011) which says that competitive intelligence has emerged as an important area within business intelligence where
the emphasis is on understanding and measuring a firm's external competitive environment. The last is presented
by Špingl (2007) and he says that while CI is more focused on external environment, primarily on the behavior of
competitors, BI primarily on indoor environments. In other words, BI is working with information that is within the
company (even the external environment). CI works mainly with information that is outside of the company. Thus
we can find a difference in information sources.
We can also specify to the competitor intelligence, i.e. intelligence about competitors. Safarnia, Akbari, and
Abbas (2011) reported that competitor intelligence is activity focused on the understanding of competitors, their
strengths, weaknesses and expectations of their actions. CI is according to them wider and includes activities to
understand the competitive environment in relation to own business, analysis of the impact of competition on
business and possible actions and reactions of enterprise. Simply we can say that competitive intelligence is superior
to competitor intelligence, and it gives it the added value, usually in the form of inputs for strategic decision making.
Of these approaches and definition of CI to other disciplines, we can create the following definition, with which
we also operate in this paper. Competitive intelligence is the process of monitoring the competitive environment and
competitors of enterprise, in which the definition, information gathering, analysis and distribution of the obtained
results is carried out gradually so that they can support the efficient business activity and its ability to make qualified
decisions, especially in relation to its competitors. Competitive intelligence deals with the collection and analysis of
such information, which can generate ideas on future trends, draw attention to the potential risks and opportunities
and their key characteristic is usability of this information for follow-up action.