Content area
Full Text
Shortly after a senior executive of UGI heard Ben Gilad speak about competitive intelligence in the Spring of 1994, the Pennsylvania utility retained the Rutgers professor to find someone to set up and run CI at its AmeriGas propane gas subsidiary. Gilad chose Bill Marks, a nine-year AmeriGas veteran working in the subsidiary's Houston supply office. Management moved Marks to AmeriGas headquarters at Valley Forge, handed him a laptop and said, Go to it.
AmeriGas needed decent competitive intelligence in the wake of a major acquisition - the latest in a long series --that boosted it to the No. 1 spot in the propane industry. But so fragmented is the propane business that even $1 billion in annual sales failed to bring market dominance. Rather, the acquisitions created fiefdoms that failed to communicate. "We were trying to do things on a national level," says Marks. "Meanwhile, we were being...