BPM Analytics

Competitive intelligence for B2B businesses

For businesses to make informed decisions and navigate complex and dynamic competitive landscapes, it is crucial to analyse industry trends, identify market opportunities, disruptions, and threats, and monitor competitor activities. However, according to research, 63% of companies are currently experiencing some form of disruption, while only 3% have made any successful transformation. This is where competitive intelligence (CI) can help businesses base their strategies and predictions on data.

What is competitive intelligence?

It is a business’s ability to collect and analyse information about its competitors, customers, and market trends to gain a competitive advantage. It helps identify gaps, challenges, and opportunities to improvise, improve, and develop strategic business practices.

Competitive intelligence is not just about identifying your competitor’s weakness but gaining a tactical and strategic business advantage to benefit the company in the long term. It is also about leveraging data intelligence to acquire potential customers.

Competitive intelligence sources

Competitive intelligence gathering includes keeping an eye on several published and unpublished sources that give insight into your competitors. This may involve attending business conferences, interviewing customers, and following broadcasts and newsletters. However, the channels you want to follow depend on the nature of your business. Several sources of CI over the internet include –

1. Business website – A competitor’s website is the first source of information. As a business looking to gather CI, this is the first platform to go to for product information, press releases, and partnerships.
2. Product pages – Product pages showcase your competitor’s offerings, enabling you to use that information to analyse where your product stands in comparison, and if you are competitive in the market.
3. Blog content – Depending on the nature of the business, a blog could include stories about the competitor’s achievements, products, solutions, research, and more.
4. Press releases and industry news – These provide valuable insight into your competitor’s performance, achievements, challenges, and failures. It is important to understand both success stories and failures to steer clear of potential pitfalls.
5. Promotion pages – These pages can change often, and it is crucial to review them regularly to gain insights into the competitor’s promotion strategies that are effective and those that are not.
6. Executive team pages – Executive team pages reveal the key figures behind your competitor’s success or failure. By identifying individuals who drive growth or downfall, a business can gauge high-potential individuals.
7. Investor relations pages – Through their annual performance reports, you can learn where your competitors are raising funds from and how they are performing. This can help you identify opportunities within your business that you may have missed until now.
8. Social media profile pages – Depending on the type of business, a company can use multiple social media platforms. Competitors can monitor the customer comments and reviews, posts, and hashtags that a business uses to engage with its target audience.
9. CrunchBase and Glassdoor profiles – From turnover to annual profits and employee hiring statistics, CrunchBase and Glassdoor profiles give you all the information. For example, if there is a repeated vacancy, either the competitor is unable to retain talent, is not able to find one, or needs multiple resources because they are growing fast.
10. Wikipedia – This is an open-source platform wherein you can find everything from the company’s history to its founders, vision, goals, achievements, and even litigations.

Benefits of high-quality competitor analysis

If you use competitive marketing intelligence technology effectively, you can reuse factors that worked well for your competitors and avoid their mistakes. Here are some of the benefits –

Predict competitors’ moves.

By predicting competitors’ moves, you can stay ahead of the game in evolving market expectations. Drawing insights from press releases, media updates, and product and service offerings is helpful in this case.

Refine your marketing strategy.

A business with the best and most innovative marketing strategy usually makes the cut and takes the early mover’s advantage. Keep an eye on your competitor’s marketing strategy to refine your own as well as understand the response and preferences of your target audience.

Understand customer expectations.

By analysing your competitor’s customers, you can get insights about your own. Know what matters to them the most and what will enhance their experience to improve product and service offerings.

Competitor analysis chronology

Competitor analysis is a strategic activity where you need the right combination of technology, domain expertise, and the right guidance by an expert partner. The usual chronological order of competitive intelligence is as follows –

1. Identifying competitors – Know your direct and indirect customers and their target market. You can segment them into demographics, business verticals, and solution types.
2. Collecting relevant data – It is important to collect data that will be helpful. The data should be accurate and directly help your marketing strategies, business campaigns, and productization.
3. Turning data into actionable insights – Take the help of technology to convert this data into actionable insights.
4. Sharing the information with relevant stakeholders – Leverage these insights and share them with decision makers, top leadership, and the sales and marketing teams to make strategic decisions, refine marketing approaches, and enhance competitive positioning.

How can Infosys BPM help?

Infosys BPM Analytics Services enhance business outcomes across various organisational units by leveraging data, domain expertise, and technology. We focus on key business metrics to drive top-line growth and profitability. Our approach towards competitive market analysis spans the analytics pyramid, utilising in-house experts, domain knowledge, and cutting-edge tools. From advisory to model development and maintenance, explore our comprehensive analytics solutions.