An effective competitive intelligence monitoring process is the fuel to keep your competitive intelligence program running on all cylinders, but with all of the information out there, it can also be the bain of your existence. So, is it time to implement a competitive intelligence solution?
As you start to look into 2023 and consider your intelligence process, it can be helpful to audit your current monitoring capabilities and explore procedural or infrastructure improvements for the new year. In this guide, we will share best practices for identifying the optimal information sources, filtering these sources to eliminate noise, and which technology to use to assist in your information analysis process.
Competitive intelligence (CI) monitoring is the process of gathering information about your competitors to gain insights into their strategies and activities. CI monitoring aims to help you understand your competitive landscape so that you can make more informed decisions about your own business.
There are a number of different ways to gather competitive intelligence, including online and offline sources. Here are the top 10 sources we recommend you start with:
1. Company websites (Press release pages, blog pages, career pages, product landing pages)
2. Industry trade associations
3. Online news articles
4. Social media
5. Financial reports
6. Analyst reports
7. Investor presentations
8. Government databases
9. Job Sites
10. Internal intelligence contributions from customer-facing roles (sales, partnerships, business development etc.)
Check out our blog about key CI data sources you should be tracking here.
Information is prolific and can become overwhelming. We always suggest you ask yourself, what do your stakeholders need? (If you don't know, ask them!) For example, sales may need insights to help them win more deals. In this scenario, you would want to set up monitoring of competitors' product pages, pricing pages, a feed from Salesforce to perform win/loss analysis, and even a folder for other salespeople to contribute things they have heard on sales calls.
But, if your stakeholder group is the executive team, they are likely interested in more strategic information. In this case, we would suggest you set up monitoring of critical competitor alerts, funding alerts, financial reports, and analyst reports referencing competitors in your key product areas. The point is, the information you want to monitor is highly dependent upon the deliverables you intend to produce for your audience. So, start with your stakeholders' needs and map back to sources that will give you the answers you need to solve their problems. You can always start small and expand your source library with time. In our experience, it is way easier to expand sources than to try to cut down on sources after the fact.
This is where technology really comes in. There are a number of free or cheap monitoring tools, that allow you to set up news feeds for example (i.e. Google Alerts). But, these are noisy as heck! So, we recommend you bucket your information sources based on topic, product area, or key competitors. In Wide Narrow, we call this an inbox. Once your sources are connected, you can use our InfoLab data processing module, to apply powerful positive and negative filters using keywords, your taxonomy, and even AI-recommended filters. You will be amazed at how much noise is filtered out. This is what we call pre-filtering and will ensure you have a manageable information flow from day 1.
But, wouldn't it be better if your filters could improve over time? Again, this is the difference between setting up free information feeds versus using a dedicated competitive intelligence monitoring tool. Not to beat the Wide Narrow drum too much 😊, but our platform provides you with analytics to review your inbox quality and tools to improve your inboxes across time. If you have ever set up 10 Google alerts and sent them into Outlook you will understand what a headache this solves.
Selecting a competitive intelligence monitoring tool is very dependent upon your needs. To help with your research process, I am going to bucket the tools into 3 major categories (Free, Cheap, and Enterprise):
If you are starting a new competitive intelligence function, take some time and talk to your colleagues. Get the inside scoop on their perspective of the competitive landscape, and which competitors they see most, and develop a game plan to best serve your key stakeholders. Remember, Rome was not built in a day, so start simple and start small with the idea to scale your monitoring and intelligence deliverables as time progresses. When you have made the rounds in that first week or two, or if you are managing your competitive intelligence program with legacy infrastructure, it would be best to get a core toolset in place.
This is where Wide Narrow comes in. We are not just an intelligence monitoring tool, but an Intelligence HQ for your team. Having one place to monitor information, work on scheduled and ad-hoc projects, and produce deliverables rapidly with the help of a structured CI process can allow you to scale your efforts and provide exponential value internally. If you'd like to take that next step, please feel free to click here and schedule a live demo. It is never too early to consider leveling up your intelligence infrastructure.