0
0
Every business has competitive information either in their CRM system or on notebook pages. With the right tools, aqute.com/competitive-intelligence makes it possible to analyze and share these insights across teams and departments.
CI is an ethical, legal process for gathering, analyzing and leveraging data about your market, your competitors, your customers and your industry to improve performance and market position. Essentially, it’s about staying ahead of the curve by anticipating opportunities and threats before they become apparent.
Having access to key insights about your competitors, markets, and customers makes it possible to make strategic decisions that drive growth and success. These insights form the basis of competitive intelligence. The best CI strategies take into account short- and longer-term market trends in order to uncover opportunities for your business.
There are two primary categories of CI: tactical and strategic. Tactical CI includes research that addresses short-term, bottom-line issues such as capturing market share or increasing revenue. Strategic CI is more focused on high-level, longer-term issues such as risks and opportunities.
Depending on what your CI goals are, the type of information you gather will vary. For example, if your sales team is looking to win more deals, they’ll need to understand how their competitors stack up against them to craft better positioning and messaging strategies. This will allow them to develop differentiated go-to-market (GTM) strategies that help their clients see the unique value of your offering over that of competitors.
It is a good idea to start your CI plan by conducting a competitive analysis. This is often called a SWOT Analysis. The analysis will examine your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to help you identify areas for improvement within your own business. This process can be time-consuming, but once you’ve completed the initial analysis, it will save you a significant amount of time in the long run as you continually monitor your competitors.
Once you’ve established your CI strategy, the next step is to set up systems for collecting and storing competitive intel. In order to make it easier to retrieve information, you should centralize your intel using CI software. This will allow you quickly review and triage any new intel, keeping your competitive analysis agile and efficient.
Methods Of CI
The methods of CI vary, but most involve studying your competitors’ products and services. This can include analyzing their marketing strategies, pricing structures, and operations. It could also include monitoring trends on the market, like new competitors entering or leaving the space.
The CI process is a way to anticipate changes in the market and interpret events objectively. It is an important component of developing a business strategy. Competitive intelligence is a formal, ethical process. It is a process that aims to provide useful insights into the competition using both published and non-published information.
The most important aspect of delivering results is ensuring that your team understands how the data is relevant to their roles and business goals. It is important to create a schedule that allows for regular sharing of competitive intelligence, and to integrate CI into the daily activities in different departments.
For example, sales teams could use CI to develop differentiated marketing strategies that would help them stand apart from their competitors and gain a greater share of the marketplace. Similarly, product development teams can use CI to identify their products’ most important features and advantages.
As the CI world continues to evolve, teams increasingly use a holistic method that includes both internal and outside data sources. This broad approach allows a company to identify opportunities and risks, such as the emergence of new market players or the impact of shifting consumer demand, with greater accuracy.
It is important to monitor KPIs regardless of the size of your competitive intelligence program. This includes content adoption, and how often your teams are referencing competitor information. Additionally, it is essential to measure the success of your CI efforts by determining how they drive action. This can be measured by evaluating competitive win rates, revenue impact, and how much time is being saved by having access to CI research.
CI Tools
A competitive intelligence tool should be a part of every business’s tech stack. This software gathers data on competitors, industry patterns, and customer sentiment. It enables businesses to develop effective strategies that drive revenue and growth.
CI tools can also help companies mitigate risk in their business strategy, by identifying potential opportunities and threats. A competitor could introduce a new product which could disrupt the existing market share. Using CI, a business could prepare for these changes and analyze the impact on its sales and marketing strategy.
A CI tool will also help identify market gaps and opportunities for differentiation. This data can inform a company’s decision-making process and allow them to develop products and services that meet their target customers’ needs. This is important for companies who are in fast-growing industries like ecommerce and mobile applications.
A CI tool must have the following features in order to help businesses make better decisions.
Customizable reports and dashboards for at-a-glance views of critical business metrics. Reporting and analysis in detail for teams with different permissions. Data visualization transforms vast data sets into easily digestible insight. Integrations with leading CRMs and communication channels.
