New technological surveillance and benchmarking theories and tools applied to sustainable and strategic planning of the naval industry

Since their beginning, companies establish procedures to observe their competitors. Methods for obtaining this kind of information have evolved with the internet era; a plethora of tools is nowadays available for this job. As a consequence, a new problem has emerged: documentary noise, keeping companies from being able to process and benefit from the huge amount of information gathered. Strategic planning mainly relies on obtaining environmental knowledge, so companies need help on dealing with this documentary noise; technological surveillance and benchmarking are preferred methodologies to achieve this objective, coping with data produced by automatic internet tools like search engines and others. Qualified results of better nature are produced by bringing new theories on information gathering and processing intoboth tools. This article exposes empirical results on the application of a demonstrative technological surveillance system based on different R&D management structures, relying on benchmarking indicators for the naval and aeronautics industries.