Laura Conejos is responsible for Competitive Intelligence (CI) at Sara Lee International. Laura created the CI unit with worldwide scope for the main global brands of the firm.

Prior to this position, she was R&D Category Manager for the Air Care business at Sara Lee, previously she worked in the pharmaceutical sector in the R&D Team at Alcon Cusí.

Laura has a Degree in Pharmacy from the University of Barcelona and holds a Masters in Business Administration from the Esade Business School, Barcelona.

Creating a Competitive Intelligence Unit in a Multinational Company

Creating a new department from scratch is always exciting, but when this department is Competitive Intelligence, it can even be more exciting, because it leads a change in the culture of the company: the Competitive Culture.
 
To build this competitive culture, the first step is to create awareness about the new role throughout the organization and to engage key people. To accomplish this at Sara Lee International, we developed the Competitive Intelligence Network (CIN). The CIN acts as an extension of the arms of the Competitive Intelligence Unit. The CIN helps capture information and spread the Intelligence knowledge, therefore enabling Competitive Intelligence perform and building the Competitive Culture day to day, in a leading organization.

Join me as I share my experiences and suggestions for establishing a successful environment for competitive intelligence to thrive.

Presentation Goals

• Share the experience of creating a Competitive Intelligence department: the difficulties and the successes.
• Lead a change of mindset by building a competitive culture
• Understand the needs of a company and planning the creation of the unit.