Why Competitive Intelligence is Crucial to your Business

Introduction

Competitive Intelligence (CI) is an integral part of businesses today. This is because it allows you to conduct detailed research into the elements that make other businesses within your industry a success. Essentially, competitive intelligence refers to the process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data related to specific business competencies so as to improve your business model proponent. In a nutshell, CI aims to conduct extensive market research into the key industry players to improve your business.

Benefits of market intelligence

It is critical for businesses using market intelligence to do so by using the key aspects of deep dive research where they will be able to collect insightful knowledge as to how business structures and models integrate with real-life consumer application.

For starters, CI boosts the product and service speeds into the market. In normal circumstances, launching new products is determined by a variety of factors that mostly dwell on the creation and testing process. Nonetheless, CI expounds on the areas that have been unexplored in the market so as to bring about changes in core industry components. As a general rule, the competitive a product or service is, the more it influences the relative speeds in which these products/services are launched into the market.

Furthermore, you will be able to predict the competition’s behaviors through market intelligence. This is due to the fact that competitive intelligence was founded on the basis of knowing the tactics of the top competitors within specified industries. It is useful in predicting the various behaviors that these top competitors will indulge so as to gain the competitive edge. As a result, it is advantageous for your company to know these techniques so as to foreplan for your own counter strategies in the market.

Finally, CI helps businesses make certain decisions with confidence. This is mainly because these businesses have acquired a deep understanding of the market intelligence elements such that they are sure of the various steps that they need to take. This is in order to stay ahead of the competition and bring new insights into the industry.

Industries using competitive intelligence

There is a multitude of industries aiming to use Competitive intelligence to be able to gain an edge in the business market. Leading industries that apply this technique include:

Technology – the technology industry is growing at a very radical and unprecedented rate. This being the case, technological industries thrive to introduce new technologies so as to stay ahead in the ever-evolving industry.
Healthcare – Healthcare industries also utilize CI in a variety of ways as they are bound by changing factors such as government regulations, market stakeholders and patients as consumers. To stay ahead of the competition, healthcare industries conduct extensive research before making any bold moves that will affect the value and quality of products/services they offer.
Manufacturing and industrial sectors – the manufacturing sector is not left behind in this analysis as there have been evolving automated technologies and changes in the supply chain management that potentially affects the quality of products. CI helps the manufacturing industry to maximize on the quality of their products (profits), as well as minimize the risks involved in changing market preferences.

How to conduct competitive intelligence research

Now that we have analyzed the advantages of using CI, as well as the top industries that use CI, it is essential for us to understand how CI is really conducted. Let’s start by saying that competitive intelligence is not your ordinary market research. It involves a tad more elements that the rudimentary competitor’s benchmarks.

Companies like the NetBase Quid have devoted their services towards conducting competitive intelligence on your behalf. They employ media attention insights, product and service insights, personnel and culture insights, sales insights and partnership insights. All this is done to provide the best solution for your business. Some of top-rated accomplishments are in the health, consumer goods and technological industries.