Six Guidelines for Effective Competitive Intelligence Gathering

The business environment is highly competitive. Due to shifting industry dynamics, technology disruption and socio-economic challenges, the market is changing continuously. To sustain, a business needs to be on its toes and must adapt quickly to changes.

This necessitates being aware of competitors’ activities. Conducting competition analysis to gather information which can be effectively used to design business strategies is a smart move. It is important to study the competitive landscape and collect meaningful data to draw the right inference.

Competitive intelligence entails:

• Identifying competition – The first step in an effective competitive intelligence study is to identify the competitors. It is always advisable to limit this set to five or six direct competitors that are targeting the same customers as the company undertaking the study. This will ensure that the companies being followed for competition analysis are relevant.

• Gathering information in public domain – In the current digital era, most information is available online. Competitors should be tracked online, including checking their websites, social media pages, and consumer forums. This alone will give immense information. Furthermore, press coverage can be checked to know more about their launches, marketing strategies, and new markets. An intelligent way to gather data is to participate in trade shows. This will enable a company to meet its competitors directly and get insights on industry scenarios. Conducting interviews with industry experts is also advisable.

• Analyzing the data gathered – This is the most critical step in the process. Sorting relevant data and analyzing it can lend a good perspective on a competitor’s plans and strategies.

• Communicating intel – The knowledge collected through competition analysis is extremely important for various business aspects such as marketing, sales, production and innovation. Regular updates on changes in the industry will help these teams to accordingly plan their agenda and action steps to address the anticipated changes. This will help in designing an effective market strategy for beating the competition and staying ahead in the race.

• Conducting exercise regularly with the right focus – Competitive analysis should be a regular exercise, given the ever-changing competitive landscape. New entrants may enter the market, while old players could exit. Technological transformations could render a product redundant or changing customer perceptions may necessitate a product upgrade. Gathering data regularly and analyzing it will equip a business to handle such situations effectively.

• Preparing competitor profiles – One of the ways to stay relevant is to create a company profile for each competitor and update it with available details. This helps in tracking competition regularly and closely following innovations, launches, trends, and technological adaptations that can create a shift in the market and industry

In a rapidly changing environment, the importance of competitive intelligence and competition analysis cannot be emphasized more. Companies need to gear to tap opportunities or minimize threats, and this can happen only if they are well informed. Successful organizations use competitive intelligence gathering as a tool to gain insights that help them design strategies which could enable them to emerge as a leader.