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By Knight Kiplinger

The Kiplinger Washington Editors

Jan. 2, 2009

2009: A Rough Start
But a Better Finish

The recession will be painful through the first six months of the new year, but a recovery will start in the second half. This week�s Kiplinger Letter looks at the pluses and minuses of the economic picture and explains how you can tell when an improvement is close.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Metal Prices, Small Business, Selling, Health, Obama's Cabinet, Regulations, Water Highways, Coal and the Middle East

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About a year ago I started a golf accessory online business . I would like to know how I can best market the site to get more visibility from customers as well as differentiating myself from other golf online store.

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How to Avoid Nasty Surprises

Surprises are rarely a friend to a business, but there are ways to prepare for the unexpected -- and systems for getting a heads-up of a problem early.

Worth Reading: The Quick Take from Kiplinger

October 2008

Kenneth A. Sawka

Outward Insights

Kenneth A. Sawka is the managing partner of competitive intelligence and strategy consulting firm Outward Insights in suburban Boston. Outward Insights contributes a monthly column on competitive intelligence issues to Kiplinger Recommends. Sawka has more than 20 years' of business and government intelligence experience and has appeared on CNBC's Squawk Box and in publications such as Time and Investor's Business Daily.

Surprises may be great for kids and parties, but they are rarely much fun in business. Surprises are, by definition, unexpected -- and the unexpected can make a mess of employee and production schedules, customer service, pricing strategies and product development.

"Surprise takes what could be a manageable -- though perhaps unpleasant -- situation and makes it almost completely unmanageable," writes Ken Sawka in this month's column on competitive intelligence (CI). Sawka, managing partner of the CI firm Outward Insights, advocates developing a comprehensive early warning system "that combines structured analysis of plausible threat scenarios with a simple and effective approach to information monitoring."

By considering various scenarios that could threaten their business -- everything from lengthy power disruptions to suddenly being confronted with competition for your highest-profile product or service -- managers can develop possible responses. "For the purposes of building the early warning system, companies can also use the scenarios to identify indicators -- industry developments, events and circumstances -- that would have to occur for the conditions depicted in any one scenario to actually occur. These indicators then become the basis of focused external information monitoring," Sawka says.

Indicators that he says could bear close and effective watching include competitive shifts, regulatory changes, consumer, political or social changes and economic conditions.

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