Frequently Asked Questions

At Tyson Heinz we work to ensure the success of our clients, both as individuals and as companies. We aren’t interested in accolades or credit, but in making sure that you and your internal customers are as well informed as possible on a given topic of intelligence. And even more importantly, we are interested in seeing you build on your success year after year.

Second, we won’t abandon you towards the end of a project. We don’t consider a project closed when a certain number of interviews are completed or the deadline date has arrived. We are well-known among our clients, and in the Competitive Intelligence industry, for our follow-up efforts, and for pursuing results until all avenues of ethical inquiry have been exhausted. We are also available after the project to address your clarification questions. Our projects are successful for us when they are successful for our clients.

Tyson Heinz does not specialize in any particular industry, but we do have vast experience in many industries. While some firms choose to limit their focus to a particular industry, this also means that they must work for both you and your competitor. And it means that their intelligence results are influenced by the “current thinking” or common wisdom in your industry. We bring a fresh perspective and a lack of conflicts to the table. Others may be able to carefully balance multiple, competing clients without a conflict of interest. We prefer to avoid any potential for, or even the appearance of, a conflict entirely.

We find that the best used, and best received reports, are generally those that are incisive, but brief, to the point, and insightful. We can provide a variety of deliverables, but we don’t use a cookie-cutter approach. All of our reports are custom-developed from the ground up to meet the specific requirements of individual clients and projects.

For us, the information and the audience drive the format for a deliverable. Some of our analyses are for presentation to an executive committee and usually require very visual presentations or very brief documents. Others, such as competitive assessments, inform strategy development efforts and are typically much more detailed.

No. Tyson Heinz does not use junior personnel for any of our projects. All of our researchers in our offices are seasoned professionals experienced in conversational interviewing techniques that elicit difficult to find intelligence.

Each project is coordinated by a highly experienced project manager, who will act as your primary liaison with the research team, and who is responsible for delivery of your project results. Additionally, the firm’s principals are intimately involved in every aspect of your project, and are always available for any project-related issue.

Our clients are our partners. We rely on frequent contact with our partners to help ensure the success of each effort. At a minimum, we provide a project kickoff meeting, an interim report and presentation, and a final report and presentation. For large projects, we develop a more sophisticated communication plan, with more frequent (sometimes weekly) communications, multiple reports, and larger stakeholder meetings. For all projects, partner communications are agreed to in advance,

At Tyson Heinz, all of our research is conducted in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the association of Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals and the American Marketing Association. What this means is that we conduct our business in an ethical, fair, legal, and responsible manner.

We don’t feel that sample reports are representative of our client deliverables. Our reports are almost always “work for hire”, belong to our client, and are proprietary and confidential deliverables. And because each report is specific to that particular client and custom-designed for each client project, samples do not give a good sense of the kind of report you might expect for your project. We will work closely with you throughout the project to ensure that the deliverable meets your specific requirements.

Over the course of 30-plus years, quite a few companies have used our services. In fact, more than three-quarters of the Fortune 100, and over half of the Fortune 1000 have trusted Tyson Heinz to meet their competitive intelligence needs through our consulting, research, seminars, in-house training, and publications.

As part of the project proposal process, we are happy to put you in touch with a few of our current clients.

We price our services on a project basis. Our long experience in this field grants us the ability to accurately estimate the level of effort required, the optimal staffing level for the project, and the time it will take to complete. Many of our clients also like our long-term outsourcing (retainer) contracts, which provide for on-demand service, maximum attention, discounted hourly rates, and the spreading of cost over the budget year.