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Rating: 
Summary: Selected as "the" text for government all-source analysts
Review:
Rather than outline the wonderful aspects of this book, which other reviewers have done so ably, I will just say that I rank the authors up there with Ben Gilad (Israel), Mats Bjore (Sweden), and Jan Herring, Dick Klavens/Brad Ashton, and Leonard Fuld (USA), and we have made this book "the" text for the annual government all-source analysis training that centers on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).
This book, in combination with Ben Gilad's "Early Warning", the Leonard Fuld's "New Competitor Intelligence", Dick Klavens and Brad Ashton's "Keeping Abreast of Science & Technology", and Mats Bjore forthcoming book, are the essential five books for any business intelligence professional or anyone seeking to understand best in class business intelligence.
Rating:
Summary: Effectively covers the key bases
Review: As a strategy consultant, I am often asked to provide my clients with well analyzed recommendations and findings. My biggest problem always has been to justify the methods I choose to reduce a wealth of data into something meaningful. For years now, I have relied upon Porter's classics and my strategy texts from my MBA program, but they usually aren't practically oriented. This book, better than any other I have seen, provides a straight forward set of instructions and directions, along with enough examples and charts, to keep me on the straight and narrow with my analyses. I do have a few beefs eith this book - as I do most of the others on my shelf. Unlike my strategy texts, the text isn't the most colourful, and it could have benefitted from even more samples although it is already quite large in size, and you cant read through the book from cover to cover, but I keep it handy anytime I'm applying a strategy method and it works great in that way. The other thing I would have liked is even more coverage of some of the newly evolving technology-focussed methods. These minor shortcomings aside, I'd recommend it to others who, like me, have to rely upon the application of proven methods to regularly produce findings for our business clients.
Rating:
Summary: About time! A practical and sound book on analysis
Review: I got this book last week and have been working with it ever since. The book is not meant to be read straight through. Instead, you can use it as the need arises. It covers 24 methods of analysis, probably more than I'll ever need, but it is good to know they are here just in case I do need to apply one I hadn't considered or even heard of before. Its approach is both useful from a conceptual viewpoint, in that it desribes where the technique came from and what it was designed to do. It is also helpful from a practice view in that it gives much discussion, and often figures and examples too, on how to actually apply the methods in a step-by-step fashion. I hadn't seen such a practical book on analysis methods before this one and can only say bravo to these authors!
Rating:
Summary: Great Reference - Just in Time
Review: I just received this book a couple of days ago, and am very glad that I did! I had previously read another book by one of the authors and the other author is a well-known CI consultant from my home country. For those of you not already in the know, yes we have some world-class authors in addition to our world-class athletes. As a consultant, I am always doing analytical work for my clients and have often had to search around for material to support the techniques that I frequently used. Well, my searching and scrounging days are over now that I have this handy guide! I put this book to immediate work on a couple of projects I am doing and can tell you that it has already returned the purchase price several times over in the amount of time it saved me from having to dig up information from a variety of sources about the included techniques. The book does some things none of the other previous sources I used did by providing both the strengths and weaknesses of these techniques as well as a detailed "how to" apply them step-by-step with actual examples. This is unique to my knowledge as the sources I have used nearly always give just a few paragraphs on the technique and little if any background as to their unique characteristics. Thank you to the two authors for doing us a favour on that aspect. I also appreciate that the book includes coverage of 24 different techniques. I have used about ten of these over the last few years, and had heard of several of the other ones but hadn't yet applied them in a project. The coverage of each technique is pretty thorough to be sure, but some (like financial ratio and statement analysis, management profiling) will obviously get used more frequently than others (like S-curve analysis). Also, the authors provide approaches that have been tested in the real-world, which is better to my mind than book-length theoretical treatises that sometimes accompany applications of these methods. I will be buying spare copies of this book to provide for my subs so that I can be sure they will have guidance for properly utilizing these techniques. I think I may also get a few for some of my clients so that they can tell I haven't conjured up my findings on their projects, but actually based them on rigorous techniques. One thing I found interesting is that my volume is a soft-covered version. This is nice in that it likely saved me some money but I think I would have preferred a hard cover version as this book is likely best used as a reference text that will be coming on and off my shelf frequently over the course of my projects. Last but not least, I wonder and hope that these authors will do another text in the future that will provide coverage of additional techniques in the manner that they have accomplished with this book.
Rating:
Summary: The Secret Weapon in my MBA
Review: I lucked out a few weeks ago when I happened to find this book during a search I was doing in preparing for a take home case exam final I had in my MBA program. Our professor wanted us to provide solid analysis of the case, a large Harvard Business School job covering a well-known multinational business, and, as usual, hadn't given us much background as to what he meant by this. This was both good and bad for me. Fortunately, I figured he expected us to use one of the many methods we had covered during the two years I've been sweating through this program. Unfortunately, I had already sold most of my books to our bookstore during buybacks and didn't really know where to go to remind myself of the techniques I've learned, and mostly forgotten. Then I found this gem! What luck for me as it covered many of the methods I knew, and some I honestly had never heard of. This struck me as strange since I am in a perennial top rated Ivy League MBA program. I brushed up on the old standbys like SWOT, Porters and ratio analysis, and also reviewed some other useful ones like strategic group analysis and STEEP. I ended up using about a handful of these on the exam. And it worked! I got the highest mark on the exam and the prof remarked that my solution was the best one he had seen in terms of being backed by solid analytical support. I only wish I had this book several semesters earlier. It would also have helped me on several other courses I took. I won't be selling this book too quickly though. Instead, I'll be taking it with me to my new job as a management consultant for one of the large strategy boutiques in nearby Boston. I've also let a few of my first-year friends know about it since it will give them a leg up for their next year in our program. The only problem now is that the word about this book is getting out and it will no longer give us a competitive advantage! Maybe my profs were right when they said that advantages weren't really sustainable after all! Still, I'd rather know and use this stuff well. I'd recommend this book for any MBA student who needs to provide analytical support for their course or project work. Just don't tell every other student about it, okay?
Rating: 
Summary: Text-heavy and not particularly insightful
Review: I was somewhat disappointed with this book. I had expected a useful handbook on a series of widely used business and market analysis techniques. This book, however, is neither clear nor concise, and the 1980s vintage style graphics scattered throughout the book are not a particularly compelling summary of the rather wordy chapters. Keep looking.
Rating:
Summary: Useful techniques
Review: I'm using this book as support in my consultancy assignments. I agree with the other reviewers that it has many useful methods presented in a unique way. The FAROUT thing confused me at first, but makes sense once you actually start using it. Now I refer to it before reading the chapters. This is the best book I've seen yet covering analysis methods and should help most any consultant who does analysis work.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding one stop source for techniques and "how to"
Review: It is rare to find a text that pulls together the many quite different techniques that can be used to analyze a business and the competitive environment in which it operates. This book does that, and more! The authors have addressed their personal needs as much as the needs of those who will use the benefits of their labours. Now, when asked about a technique or asked for a recommendation as to how to attack an issue, one can turn to this one text and extract the most appropriate tool(s) and make sensible assessments of which of the various analytical tools is most appropriate. The authors have gone one better - and I suspect that more than one MBA student will appreciate their efforts - they have included a very useful and quite comprehensive outline of financial analytical tools that add to the more "marketing" oriented techniques detailed in the core of the text. The various financial ratios are now at your fingertips. The financial analysis can be woven into the market and environmental competitive analysis. Oh to have had access to this at an earlier stage of my career. One of those indispensable tools. A "must have" in the office.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent coverage of management analysis tools
Review: This book fills a niche that should have been done by somebody a long time ago. It includes most of the popular analysis techniques that a management consultant would normally use, and provides a common process description for employing the method. It makes an excellent complement to Porter's series of books and can be nicely combined with more conceptual treatments in the strategy field. I have already bought several copies for my office colleagues as it will be useful for them in their consulting work as well. I can see why it has gotten many good reviews and I'd concur with these. It is worth having this one on your book shelf although, like me, you may find yourself pulling it off the shelf to refer to on a frequent basis.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Handbook to Have on My OWN Shelf
Review: With this book, I finally have a cost-effective way to introduce a wide range of well-known competitive intelligence tools and techniques to our graduate students in the CI Certificate program. They represent a wide range of knowledge domains, so they need access to this basic information in a convenient format. I've adopted this as a text for the program. (To our former students--you know who you are--BUY THIS BOOK.)
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