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Corporate investigations are now common in India. There are a number of agencies and private investigators who provide these services in India. Corporate investigations also involve corporate fraud investigation. Today every business needs different business services because of the competitive environment and fraud cases. There are different definitions and explanations about corporate investigations.

Corporate Investigations:

Corporate investigations in India used to investigate business operations. These are also known as business investigations. The term Corporate Investigation encompasses a variety of services for completely unrelated and diverse businesses.

Corporate investigations are closely related and interlinked to corporate fraud investigations. Fraud consists of any illegal act, the concealment of the act, and the deriving of a benefit like converting the gains to cash or other valuable commodity. Occupational fraud that happens in the work place is commonly known by misappropriation, corruption and fraudulent statements. It is the perception that fraud in the work place is committed by individual employees, but fraud can be committed by a department, division or a branch in the organization. Fraud can also be committed by outsiders. Similarly the benefit derived from the fraud may also be to the organization or an individual’s benefit. In these situations corporate investigations are made to find the reality, truth, suspect and the facts about the fraud.

Another related term is Corporate Intelligence that also referred to as "competitive intelligence". Competitive intelligence is the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing information about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization. Competitive Intelligence is an ethical and legal business practice, as opposed to industrial espionage which is illegal. The focus is on the external business environment.

There is a process involved in gathering information, converting it into intelligence and then utilizing this in business decision making. CI professionals emphasize that if the intelligence gathered is not then it is not intelligence. Another definition is also here: it as the organizational function responsible for the early identification of risks and opportunities in the market before they become obvious. The corporate investigation experts also call this process the early signal analysis.

Corporate Investigations are helpful mainly for three reasons:

1. Business Integrity: That is used to determine the integrity of business partners, mergers and other financial transactions.

2. Internal and External Misconduct and Vulnerabilities: This area of corporate investigations includes internal investigations on employees to identify the perpetrators of fraud, reasons, theft and other criminal activities.

3. Internal Safety & Efficiency in a Business: Corporate investigations are made to identify internal threats to the personal safety of a business’s employees and to identify those employees who are responsible for a decreased work product output in a business.

In India most of the businesses are interested in SWOT analysis and other related activities for their business. Corporate investigations in India are now become popular for small, medium and large organizations. Because of the competitive business opportunities this becomes more popular in India. A number of private detectives, investigators and private detective agencies provide corporate investigation services in India.