Why You Need Competitive Intelligence

Crayon's '2024 State of Competitive Intelligence' benchmarking report points to the need for CI for business. This survey finds that 65% of business sales are competitive by nature, and that's only when the client says it's a competitive business pitch. The figure is likely to be much higher, and with times being tough, businesses will have to be better prepared with their knowledge about how the market operates.

If you need background information for a sales pitch, please get in touch.

Top Companies That Invest in R&D

Finding R&D spend can be problematic as often this cost centre can be hidden on a balance sheet or be spread amongst a range of subsidiaries. This website (https://www.ideatovalue.com/inno/nickskillicorn/2019/08/top-1000-companies-that-spend-the-most-on-research-development-charts-and-analysis/) will allow you (with the provision of your email address) the ability to also locate R&D investment by country and industry.

A Picture Really is Worth a Thousand Words

Clients are often interested in how many retail outlets or warehouses that a competitor has and their location. Looking at a competitor’s physical site on Google Streetview via Google Maps gives you a lot of extra information rather than just a one-dimensional description of the size of a warehouse, for example. You can see how close it is to other transport hubs and motorway connections, how modern it is, what other businesses are nearby, and what sort of demographic is close to the location — super useful context to give to a client.

Find Competitor Intelligence

Sometimes I don’t know whom the main competitors are when researching an unfamiliar market. First stop to find out is to use Google.

Imagine that my client is Starbucks. I could then search on Google using ‘vs’ or ‘versus’ in keywords. See how a list of competitors appears. This search is also likely to elicit lots of information that has a competitive intelligence slant.

With competitive research it’s not just the direct competitors that you need to worry about, it’s the disruptors who enter your marketplace with new technology or services that solve your customer’s problems better. That’s when a comprehensive search of the market using free and paywall resources comes into play. The crucial thing here is to understand what market is in terms of the problem that your buyer wants to be solved, not just the product or service that you are selling.

Successful Competitive Intelligence

A recent article in Harvard Business Review found that 45% of competitive intelligence (CI) findings weren't used when management was making decisions about strategy. However, those companies who used the power of CI for their decision-making had four common factors:

• The CI analyst was assigned a "sign-off" authority over major decisions.

• Management was open to perspectives that were different from the internal consensus.

• The analyst's report called for proactive action more than reaction.

• The analyst was involved in product launches.

The CI analyst having sign-off for major decisions was the most important factor to getting CI used out of the four reasons above. This would indicate that the CI analyst must sit with the decision-makers and be comfortable debating and influencing others about the CI collected. They can't just drop off the slide deck and leave, but must actively champion the value and opportunity that CI brings, and make it a core component of decisions. They've also got to have "skin in the game", by having their name and research seen to be supporting decisions in a very public way that is accountable. That also helps keep the CI honest and reliable. What's not to like about that!

Free Market Research!

Millie is a new market research tool which gives a lot for free. It brings together market research, news, and reports in one place, with the added bonus of a robust search platform which enables you to filter out the info you don't want. When I tested 'Millie' on a search for avocados and the recent price hike, it directed me to a variety of national and international websites explaining the reasons behind the rising cost of this fruit, as well as analysts reports on large scale growers of avocados, and links to further earlier news reports. The result screen is a bit overwhelming to look at to start with, but once you get to grips with it, the information has been nicely curated, and offers text analytics too. One restriction for me was that it only covers eight sectors at the moment, but they are big ones such as food and beverage, health care, energy etc. Millie is a work-in-progress, so this may change, but even as it stands now, it is a pretty good resource for the desk researcher.

Retrospective Competitive Research

The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of older versions of web pages. Business researchers, and competitive intelligence professionals can use older versions of a website for company research. I have used this website to look for deleted products and branding changes, as well as tracking pricing information. It's also been great to find the names and biographies of past management. Not every web page is included but it’s a fantastic resource for building up a picture about an organisation, their products or employees.

Filtering Market Research

So, how do you pull together all the information you have collected when undertaking market research?

First, read through it all, and then take notes from what you have found. I find it helps to arrange it into sections. Depending on what you are researching, these sections might include market statistics, consumer preferences, regulatory, competitor strategies and substitutes, technology etc.

Filter out all the irrelevant or dated info, but be mindful about any vibes about the context in which your product or service operates in. Big picture stuff often dictates individual consumer preferences.

Don’t forget to include visuals. The size of a competitor factory might be 20,000sqm, but a photo of the factory instantly conveys the size, shape, flexibility of operations and type of environment that your competitor has.

Now you can see what market validation info you have.

• What themes or ideas keep repeating themselves? Draw the dots and see what emerges.

• Is the information that you have up-to-date and future-oriented?

• Do you trust what you are reading? Be honest, especially if it goes against assumptions that you’ve made. It could be the difference between success or failure.

• Does the information you have come from a variety of sources? Be aware of bias.

• What info gaps do you have? How can you fill them?

The above gives you a taste of how to use information to make a sound decision based on trends, facts, and context. Sometimes numbers won't match up or information won't be conclusive, or you just can't find that magic market size number that you desperately need. If you get stuck, just phone (027 4393795) or email Cathy for help.

Best Practice Competitor Research

People often get caught up in tracking every movement their competitors make  - they benchmark, look how a competitor differentiates themselves by product or service offering, and how they position themselves. All good-to-know stuff.

However, competitor or competitive research involves looking outside the boundaries of those identified competitors who do exactly what you do. You need to understand what substitutes there are for your product or service. These can include new technologies which are more convenient and cheaper or changing consumer preferences such as fashion trends or new social dynamics.

Competitors play a small part in the success of your product or service. In the end, its what your customers want that will have a much more lasting effect on the long-term success of your business.

Embrace your forgetfulness!

An article in the BRW has been extolling the virtues of forgetting what you know, and being open to getting new information that shakes up your perceptions. The author says that "if we refuse to let go of what we know when the knowledge is obsolete, it can interfere with our ability to keep up with the onslaught of change." Being an expert isn't always relevant anymore - you need to know who and where the disrupters to your world are, and they aren't necessarily in your industry right now.