Executive Summary

Lockheed Martin Corporation (LM) is a global aerospace and defense (A&D) company with over 100,000 employees and 2010 sales of over $45 billion. Lockheed Martin has six (6) business areas (BA), with the main focus of this paper being Information Systems & Global Solutions (IS&GS), with sales over $10 billion. The main focus of IS&GS is to provide management services, information technology (IT) solutions, and advanced technology expertise across a broad spectrum of applications to U.S. Government and other customers. IS&GS has three principal lines of business, Civil, Defense and National.

Each of the six business areas within LM has a competitive intelligence (CI) component, and within the IS&GS business area, this component is the CI Resource Center (CIRC). Its mission is to “provide access to business resources and analyses to assist in making informed A&D business decisions to increase IS&GS business opportunities and wins.” This is a newly formed mission statement, which was created in order to align the CIRC with the corporation’s strategy and mission, “powered by innovation, guided by integrity, we help our customers achieve their most challenging goals”.

The CIRC was established about four (4) years ago and has grown its customer base substantially since its inception. However, recently, the CIRC has identified, through some internal customer interviews and internal analyses, that some areas need to be refined in order to increase efficiency and effectiveness to the corporation and IS&GS business area.

Issues:

  • Too many CI web sites are confusing and time-consuming to locate the right information.
  • Review new information resources to fill in some identified knowledge gaps.
  • Internal departmental working files are located in various internal information technology (IT) systems and cannot be easily searched.
  • The company analyses tend to focus on the overall competitor and does not always delve into the competitor’s business areas where they are competing directly with IS&GS. There is additional difficulty finding private company information.
  • Capturing internal IS&GS knowledge is difficult and almost non-existent.
  • Need to better anticipate the Business Development organization’s competitive intelligence needs.

Recommendations:

  • Merge multiple CI Intranet sites into one main site for easier access to the right content.
  • Fill in knowledge gaps after an in-depth review of CI resources, taking cost and completeness of resource into account.
  • Expand the search feature of internal documents through the purchase of an indexing and search engine tool.
  • Conduct competitor analyses at the business-area level and with private companies.
  • Create a knowledge map of subject-matter experts (SMEs) to help find the right information for the right people.
  • Consider moving the CIRC organization directly under the Business Development vice president in order better anticipate the organization’s CI needs and deliver the CI faster.

Impacts to the Organization:

  • More people will use the web site if it is easier to navigate and clearer to locate information in addition to 24x7 access.
  • Filling knowledge gaps will improve research efficiency and completeness.
  • The users need competitor analysis at a lower organizational level, and with private companies, and this will provide us with a more competitive stance.
  • Too much time is wasted by ineffective searching for reuse documents internally. A search engine/indexing tool will speed up search time, allowing far more time to conduct the analysis.
  • A knowledge map of subject-matter experts (SMEs) will help to engage more people into the CI process allowing us to gather better intelligence.
  • The department will better anticipate CI needs and be able to deliver results/analyses faster by moving up in the organization. The department will also be viewed as a more credible resource to the organization.

The aforementioned recommendations will further support the company’s mission by enhancing the effectiveness of the CI Dept. in the ways identified in this paper. These changes will expect to increase the number of pertinent business opportunities found and won, thereby meeting the goals of the business area and corporation.

Company/Departmental Overview

Lockheed Martin Corporation is a global aerospace and defense company with 2010 sales of over $45B with over 100,000 employees located around the world. There are six (6) main business areas: Aeronautics, Space Systems, Global Training & Logistics (GTL), Mission Systems & Sensors (MS2), Missiles & Fire Control (MFC) and my business area and the focus of this paper, Information Systems & Global Services (IS&GS). The Lockheed Martin (LM) mission is “Powered by innovation, guided by integrity, we help our customers achieve their most challenging goals.”

LM IS&GS business area provides management services, IT solutions, and advanced technology expertise across a broad spectrum of applications to U.S. Government and other customers. In 2010, net sales of $10.0 billion at IS&GS represented 22% of our total net sales. IS&GS has 3 principal lines of business, Civil making up 42% of the business, Defense making up 32% and National with 26% of the business. The Civil group supports the nation’s needs in the areas of human capital, data protection and sharing, financial services, energy and environment, health, security, space exploration, biometrics, and transportation. The Defense group provides net-enabled situation awareness, and delivers communications and command and control capabilities through complex mission solutions to defense and international customers. And the National group designs and integrates the complex, global systems that help our customers gather, analyze, and securely distribute critical intelligence data. (LM Annual Report, 2010)

The LM IS&GS Business Development group has a competitive intelligence department located within, called the Competitive Intelligence Resource Center (CIRC). The CIRC did not have a mission statement which was recently created to help clarify our organization’s purpose, and align with the company strategy. As the environmental conditions around the corporation change, this mission statement will be revamped accordingly, as it is a living statement. The mission statement states that the CIRC will “provide access to business resources and analyses to assist in making informed aerospace & defense (A&D) business decisions to increase IS&GS business opportunities and wins.”

Topic 1: Identification and Description of Information Users and Needs

The CIRC serves many internal LM employees, starting with those inside the CI department, then the IS&GS Business Development department, followed by ISGS business area employees, the other business areas, and finally, supporting Corporate Headquarters with any requests. Of course, not every employee requires competitive intelligence so the CIRC has its usual clientele with CI needs and will pick up some new ones as new people require CI support. We market our CI services around the IS&GS business area and around Corporate Headquarters in many different ways, including hardcopy brochures, through the company and department Intranet, through internal conferences, and through word of mouth.

The majority of our users are professionals, mainly engineers within the corporation, so most have 4-yr degree and many have Masters with a number of Doctorates. Years of service also vary considerably from those who are close to retirement to a few years out of college, and even some college interns. There are a large number of people on the verge of retirement, which could cause business continuityissues unless their knowledge can be captured in a usable form. However, that is for another department to handle. Most CI users play a part in winning new business for IS&GS, whether it is meeting with the customer, negotiating with a teammate, working on a program or seeking new business. Requests for information will vary considerably from executive bios to company analyses, win-loss analyses, opportunity identification, or market research.

Below is a diagram of the CIRC main users:

The main problem that is facing the CIRC is that the users can obtain valuable CI Information from the CIRC Intranet but it is not always easy to do and this should be. The information might be available on one of the multiple Intranet sites but it not clear to the user where exactly to go to retrieve the information. As types of CI products have grown and been produced, so unfortunately have the number of Intranetsites utilized by the CIRC. The effective dissemination of CI may be the main problem the CIRC is experiencing, but there are a few other areas that need to be reviewed and are addressed herein. Some of these issues were identified by the user community through a number of interviews and questionnaires, while some were identified by the CIRC employees. When our customers identify the same issue multiple times, that signifies an issue that needs to be addressed.

Topic 2: Information Flow Analysis

Issues:

  • Capturing internal IS&GS knowledge is difficult and almost non-existent.
  • Need to better anticipate the Business Development organization’s competitive intelligence needs.

Recommendations:

  • Create a knowledge map of subject-matter experts (SMEs) to help find the right information for the right people.
  • Consider moving the CIRC organization directly under the Business Development vice president in order better anticipate the organization’s CI needs and deliver the CI faster.

A data flow diagram is provided below which shows the data flow between the CIRC and the internal users. The interactions around the corporation are plentiful but are typically one-way. The CIRC will provide information out to all the business areas and to Corporate based on inquiries, however, the CIRC does not get much information flow back to it, for example, in the form of bits of intelligence back from the users. We ask but do not receive. We only get some intelligence from other CI groups but cannot seem to obtain from those other users to whom we supply the CI.

It would be extremely beneficial to be able to solicit some CI champions outside the CIRC who are knowledgeable in some type of business intelligence, as evidenced by the red “knowledge transfer” flows in the diagram above. By this, I mean creating a subject-matter expert (SME) organization and map where the champions would be mapped based on their knowledge of the customer, a teammate or competitor, a technology, or the political environment. As Subramanian points out, “Open communication provides employees with the opportunity to translate tacit knowledge into explicit (codified) knowledge which can be contributed to EKR (Gold et al. 2001). A good communication structure within an organization is also essential for developing reciprocal relationship, which is a vital support for a knowledge-sharing environment (Kankanhalli et al., 2005).” (Subramanian , Pg. 50) The SMEs could provide information to the user directly or through the CIRC analyses. Other CIRC users might better view the champions’ knowledge as examples of what these users might also be able to provide back to the CIRC as intelligence. The possibility of providing small rewards for an exceptional response to this initiative has been discussed. Even Subramanian stated “several studies have in face found evidence to support the notion of rewards as one of the vital benefits perceived by knowledge contributors.” (Subramanian, Pg. 48).

A SME organization map might be a creative way to teach the users on the types of intelligence we could use for future intelligence products. We see that part of the issue in the lack of knowledge transfer is actually teaching others what types of information they obtain that we could also use for intelligence. Some are just not aware that the information they hold is pertinent CI. As Subramanian states, “knowledge sharing is about disseminating, transferring, diffusing, and distributing knowledge within and between organizations. When organizations are viewed as repositories of knowledge, the greatest managerial challenge is to promote knowledge sharing within an organization.” (Subramanian, Pg. 45-46). The CIRC needs to do a better job here which will increase efficiency and time in which pertinent CI is retrieved and acted upon. The goal would be to change the organization’s culture so that this type of activity would become not only acceptable but management would encourage employees to take the necessary time to incorporate this into their daily work flow.

Another recommendation is to place the CIRC directly under the Business Development Vice President instead of two levels below this position. This might not only increase our visibility to the IS&GS organization and provide us with more credibility but also allow us to better serve our group. In the lecture from week 4, Dr. Abels requested an organization change be made so her function could report to a managing partner. She “felt it was important to have direct access to a decision-maker. Second, the new structure provided direct access to the information users in the organization. Lastly, the new placement communicated a commitment to information services on the part of the organization. You can learn a lot about how information services are viewed by their placement in the organizational structure.” (Chitwood, 2011). It is important for the CIRC to report to the BD VP for the aforementioned reasons provided by Dr. Abels, and will not only increase our credibility but also our communication path. In addition, Ankur noted “…business process improvements (BPIs) improve customer experience and satisfaction, reduce the impact of workforce attrition and can ultimately boost revenue, by freeing up time and skills that can then be redeployed on other tasks.” (Ankur, Pg. 2). I believe this organizational move will do just that and additionally provide more visibility to the CI employee, making each one more valuable to the organization. Subramanian further supports this by stating “a good communication structure within an organization is also essential for developing reciprocal relationship, which is a vital support for a knowledge-sharing environment.” (Subramanian, Pg. 50).

Topic 3: Information Audit

Issues:

  • Too many CI web sites are confusing and time-consuming to locate the right information.
  • Review new information resources to fill in some identified knowledge gaps.
  • Internal CIRC departmental working files are located in various internal information technology (IT) systems and cannot be easily searched.
  • The company analyses tend to focus on the overall competitor and does not always delve into the competitor’s business areas where they are competing directly with IS&GS. In addition, it is difficult to locate private company information.

Web sites, particularly Intranets,have a plethora of advantages to creating company efficiency. The information contained therein can be accessed 24x7 and they can serve any geographic location; they can be secured for only those who “need to know”, and provide a variety of pertinent types of information, for a few examples. As the years of LM and CIRC Intranet use increased, so unfortunately have the number of Intranets, causing a great deal of user confusion. The company has many web sites within its Intranet and the CIRC has a number of sites just for the department. Each one will provide a slightly different set of information to assist the potential CI user. This has caused enough user confusion to finally realize that the web sites needed to be consolidated and ease of navigation and finding information was the most important goal. (Personal interviews, Nov 2011). “Many intranets were launched without clear objectives or strategy and have evolved in an ad hoc manner resulting in systems with limited relevance.” (Stoddart, Pg. 1). Stoddart’s statement, I believe, sums up a critical omission with our department when the intranets were initially being built and continued to be developed. And Lee states on page 23, ‘”systems integration connects individual information systems which are dispersed at different sites so that end users would feel that they are using a single system. Another way of implementing KM is to develop KM applications that retain employees’ know-how, expertise, and enable decision makers to react quickly to customers and competitors.” (Lee, 2002). Currently, the Intranet is not adequately connecting individuals, which in turn, increases the amount of time to locate pertinent customer and competitor information.

The users have a number of Intranet sites available for research, depending on the information they are seeking. Unfortunately, those in the CIRC know these sites very well, but they are not intuitive to the users. It results in confusion and an unnecessary communication to the CIRC asking for information that should easily be retrievable online. It is efficient having this information available via an Intranet 24x7 based on the geographic dispersion of employees, but the self-service should be easier. Intranets need constant care and maintenance in order to be beneficial. Stoddart wrote on page 2, “constant learning and innovation is essential to ensure continued improvement for intranets. Those responsible for intranets need to be proactive in determining how stakeholders actually use information and knowledge in their work.” (Stoddart, 2001).

The CIRC is also responsible for extending whatever online information resources can be made available or at a minimum to utilize our online resources to complete analyses for our internal customers. Based on input from the interviews and questionnaire responses, the CIRC has been lacking in a specific company financial area which helps to delve down further into a large company’s organization and into private companies.

An assessment was then performed with a number of information resources that specifically provide company information matching the type off information lacking in our current arsenal.