Competitive Intelligence

Why are customers choosing the competition over you? Better yet, why are they choosing you over the competition? In order to make solid business decisions in your strategic planning process, the company must understand which strategy your competition is pursuing and bring all your information-gathering and analysis efforts to bear on that strategy.

"The ability to learn faster that your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage."- Arie P. de Geus

Your best sources have heard about a new product in development. What stage of development has the product reached? Is it in testing? What are the users saying? When will the product be marketed or approved by the FDA? What are the core competencies of this competitor? What is the size of the R & D staff? How are they compensated? What new or established relationships have been created/strengthened with universities or other companies?

Several of your company's best people have left to work for a competitor. You've made an enormous investment in training these individuals, only to see that investment serve the interests of your rival. Why did they leave? Was it compensation, a chance for advancement, better support services, a problem manager, or the promise of newer and better products? What are your competitors doing that you should be implementing? What are you doing that you should stop doing?

You have one of three new products that are replacing older ones in the marketplace, yet all of your sales are contested and you are ending up with only 15% of the new market growth and your conversion rate of existing business is 20%. You are being beat 3 to 1 by your two other competitors and R &D tells you that the products are therapeutically equivalent. Why? How much money is your competition spending on marketing the product? How is their message different from yours? What is their relationship with their customers? What is their positioning strategy? Has their sales force been repositioned for greater effectiveness? What do customers say about the product and the company vs. your company?

You are being constantly being under priced by a competitor. Are they buying the business? Have they found a new manufacturing process? How does their manufacturing cost structure different from yours? Do they really enjoy a competitive cost advantage? What do you have to do to compete and win?

Company X is consistently able to develop new and innovative products. Who are their engineers and where were they trained? How old are they? How are they compensated? What is the R &D budget? What type of management systems are used in R &D? Are they licensing from other companies, the US Government or Universities? Is there a change in the number of patents issued? Filed? Are there other sources involved in development?

Does your external environment look similar to the above situations? Would you like to maximize the effectiveness of critical decisions and anticipate rather than react to new threats and opportunities?

There are many benefits to accurate and timely competitive intelligence including revenue enhancement, cost avoidance, sales maximization, process improvement and strategic planning.

Can Caplix improve your competitive intelligence system? We think so. Put us to the test. 

Resources

A Measure of Success - You know a lot about your customers. You know who they are, where they live, what their buying habits are. And if you're like most companies, you've done absolutely nothing with that pile of market intelligence. -  Larry Selden and Geoffrey Colvin 

Click and Dagger - Competitive intelligence has been around almost as long as capitalism itself. - Anne Stuart 

Competitive Intelligence: A Librarian's Empirical Approach - What are the various types of information required for CI activity, as well as reliable sources to monitor.

- Margaret Gross