Competitive Intelligence - What is it and why is it important?
Competitive intelligence is an essential element in developing and growing your business. Competitive intelligence (CI) is a much needed component of business planning used in determining your competitors and understanding their behaviors and performance. The gathering of CI provides key pieces of information that will help you in making decisions about your marketing, pricing, product/service selection and market share. It gives you the "tools" you need to set your business apart from your competitors.
Investopedia describes competitive intelligence as: "sometimes referred to as corporate intelligence, refers to the ability to gather, analyze, and use information collected on competitors, customers, and other market factors that contribute to a business's competitive advantage. Competitive intelligence is important because it helps businesses understand their competitive environment and the opportunities and challenges it presents. Businesses analyze the information to create effective and efficient business practices."
In order to attain success in business you have to have a well planned and well executed business plan. Within that plan, you have to create a business strategy. In order to do both of these activities, you have to have solid information. The way to get this information is through competitive intelligence gathering.
A significant part of business planning and strategy is knowing and understanding your market and your competitors. The only way you can compete with them and differentiate yourself is to know how to position yourself. You can establish your positioning by collecting information about your environment, competitors and community.
To collect this much needed information, you must research the answers to some very important questions. Most individuals have heard of the five W's and one H of information gathering. Journalists and writers often use this technique when gathering information for writing projects. These questions include, who, what, when, where, why and how. These questions are also important when researching what others in your field are doing to grow their businesses. The answers to each of these will provide you with information for your business plan and help you create a business strategy.
Question topics to consider when collecting competitive intelligence are the following:
Who is in your market? Who is part of your competitive landscape?
What are they offering? What is their price and what makes you different or unique?
When should you launch your product, sales and/or marketing campaigns?
Where are they located? Where do they service their customers?
Why are you better than your competitor(s)?
How can you offer better pricing, better products, and/or a better servicing area?
Competitive intelligence can be gathered through multiple sources, such as internet searches, networking, face to face contact with businesses offering similar services, analyzing customer feedback and reviews. When sourcing the information needed you must ensure that you are gathering your information from multiple sources and that it is valuable data and not just surface information. A deep dive is necessary when collecting information that you will be using to create the blueprint for your business. Information that is qualitative and quantitative will yield better quality insight on how to move your business forward.
An organized, well researched and thorough competitive intelligence analysis, inclusive of the questions and answers mentioned above, can provide you with the intel to create a strategy plan that will result in increased revenue and leverage market share. The information you gather will also be used to create the platform and verbiage that will set you apart from your competitors. With competitive intelligence information, you can create your own brand identity and uniqueness that will set you apart from the rest.
Competitive intelligence is a vital and necessary process that goes a long way in ensuring your company or organization’s growth and success. Competitive Intelligence should be seen as part of the foundation in which you successfully build your business or organization.
There are many ways to collect and analyze competitive intelligence. If you, your business and/or organization needs support with competitive intelligence gathering, business planning or business strategizing, please check out HIVE Connex's Services, and schedule a complimentary consultation to determine your business needs. Please contact us via email at HIVEConnex@gmail.com, dial (267) 420-2076 or message us through our website www.hiveconnex.com
Feel free to contact us directly with any questions on this particular blog topic, or any of our other HIVE Connex blog posts that provide insight and informative content about: the power of positivity, growing your empire, creating a vision board, decision making, business planning, branding in the marketplace, public speaking, creating a social media presence, business communication practices, business ethics, how to generate profit margins, managing through unprecedented and challenging times, building high performance teams, business elevator pitch, community engagement and budget administration.