Competitive intelligence is one of the most essential and useful aspects which helps management to make scalable business plans. Companies need to know how their competitors perform in the market and what are their strategies. This allows the companies to see themselves with clearer insights, and understand what they are doing successfully and what keeps them from lagging behind their competitors. To get such information, companies need to implement good market research plans and use top external sources. This would help them to perform competitively against their rivals and make effective futuristic strategies.
First of all, let us see how companies can collect data and vital information about their competitors:
1.Good Market Research plans:
Implementation of good Mystery Shopping programs or a detailed survey conducted through market research or interviews would benefit abundantly. From these sources, companies can get to know about their competitor’s products or services and their functioning in the market.
2.Social Media:
Sharing one’s brand in competition with their competitor’s brand on the social platform can give honest and unfiltered feedback from the customers. Keeping track of the competitor’s social profiles can provide information about their latest developments, collaborations, messaging, and events that they are participating in or sponsoring. These insights can be used for planning strategies.
3.Competitors’ websites:
Websites are an open book and an open door to know about the history of a company. Studying the competitors’ websites can give a good amount of information about their products or services, geographical setups, latest news, future strategies, etc.
4.Information from Databases:
Not all information can be acquired from websites or social media platforms. Hence, using some paid Databases like Capital IQ or Factiva could be helpful in acquiring in-depth information on companies, products or services, innovations, investments, etc.
5.Annual Reports:
Going through Annual Reports of the competitors , companies can give a complete view of their financial growth, business strategies, revenues, employee numbers, and so on. This is very important information to acquire for making Competitive Intelligence Strategies.
Once a good amount of information is collected from different sources, companies can sit and plan their business strategies. All these analyst reports offer an overview of a company’s focus market, including the key players in the industry, how they differentiate themselves, and how their services map with the market needs, providing greater clarity of
their competitive landscape
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanjeev Shenoy
Managing Director, HS Brands Asia
Sanjeev Shenoy has 15+ years’ experience in mystery shopping and customer experience and has helped several global brands design and manage programs across Asia. As a post-graduate in Management, he has worked in Marketing & Operations across retail and food and beverage. As a believer in the beginners’ mindset, Sanjeev seeks to bring in innovation in the mystery shopping industry through technology and best practices from other industries.
