How brands can use competitive intelligence to scale in a global marketplace.
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process of gathering, analyzing, and distributing data about companies, products, and customers in a specific marketplace to help managers in making more informed, strategic decisions. According to the 2018 State of Market Intelligence Report, companies monitor a diverse range of audiences, including customers, partners, direct competitors, indirect competitors, and prospects. In fact, 82% of them thoroughly track their own company as a necessary part of their CI efforts. With this attentive approach, they’re able to get a well-rounded perspective on the performance of their company in the greater marketplace.Since competitive monitoring is often time-consuming and a drain on internal resources, it comes as no surprise that many businesses rely on multiple products and services to accelerate the process. While 58% of them employ at least one competitive intelligence software tool, 34% choose to turn to research or consulting firm for more comprehensive results. Here’s the catch, though: A single solution will not always give you a complete picture, which explains why 39% of study respondents said that they prefer to use more than two tools to fulfill their CI-related objectives. Given that being disruptive is pretty much the only way you can succeed in this economy, learning more about your competitors is crucial to product development and marketing. Let’s take a quick look at how you can use CI to grow your business: How can CI be useful? ...
