This article asks how to do Competitor Analysis well. We offer guidance to Competitor analysis. Based on our experience of undertaking hundreds of them. At the end of the exercise, the question we usually get asked is usually the same. “How did you find all that out?”
You are walking down any English high street. You look at the shop fronts. If you take in the retailers’ names, you will struggle to determine where in the country you are. Same old shops, selling the same old stuff. If you find a high street with local shops and unique boutiques and cafes and bars, they tend to stick out. In Pre Covid London it seems there was a competition taking place. Between Costa, Leon, Pret and others. …
This article offers our thoughts about Competitive Intelligence reporting and decision making basics.
Reporting and conclusions
- Would a non-expert understand the conclusion?
- Can I summarise it in one sentence, with no more than 3 lines and dependent clause?
- Did I highlight somewhere what I do not know and how I intend to address gaps? Does the analysis have a clearly defined time frame attached? A date at which I think we should reconsider?
Report format
This is a useful report format to get you started.
- Introduction
- What has happened? / answer?
- What does it mean?
- What happens next? / can you do about it?
- So what? …
It’s a SWOT Analysis, not Competitive Intelligence. What we mean by this that SWOT Analysis is just one tool within Competitive Intelligence. It’s not the only tool.
The SWOT analysis can be a relatively dry (but essential) part of a strategic process. However, there is a danger that SWOT is given just lip service, which ends up lowering the exercise’s validity. SWOT is a useful tool, but it’s nearly always done wrong.
Quick and dirty
It’s a great quick and dirty tool. That gets a group of people at least thinking about their competitive position. It has design flaws that usually makes it a useless exercise. …
This article discusses Competitive Intelligence battlecards a powerful weapon to help you fight off your competitors. There are several articles espousing the value of regarding battle cards They are A Competitive Intelligence tool, not THE Competitive Intelligence tool. Battlecards provide an excellent picture of how your competitors sell against you. This makes them a useful weapon in your armoury, and invaluable for business planning sessions and for your sales and marketing teams.
What?
Battlecards are short and sweet cheat-sheets that help you understand your competitors. They chart your competitors’ products, pricing, marketing strategy, sales messages, strengths, weaknesses and value propositions. …
This article was written in February 2011. And describes the Gap Analysis Competitive Intelligence tool.
Use Gap Analysis helps study differences between your competitors and your own organisation. Determine what they are doing to create the Gaps. The main goal of Competitive Intelligence is to produce actionable intelligence for decision-makers.
Gap Analysis is a Competitive Intelligence tool to interpret information about your market. A Gap is simply the difference to where you are and where your competitors are. Positive Gaps indicates you are in a better position than your rivals. While a Negative Gap clearly means the reverse — in a worse situation. …
This article offers a list of top Image tools for Competitive Intelligence, Competitor Analysis Research. The list is in no particular order, and if you have any suggestions or additions, then please let us know on hello@octopusintelligence.com.
It’s true that a picture can paint a thousand words. Look at this example map we drew. The map helps you get to know about a subject. So much more than a 20-page report*. Don’t get us wrong, you need the report is required, but it’s not a bad thing as an accompaniment.
In this article we explain the need for a Market Analysis business plan. We will discuss why you need Market Analysis and what you need to provide the reader. And as you may know, it takes time and effort to build a business plan. Working out what you do, what funding you are looking for and lots of fingers in the air to determine the numbers and future performances.
The most important part of the business plan is not looking internally, but looking beyond your business. Without a serious look at what your external environment looks like, you can forget about your business plan making an impact. And it’s not good enough to list potential competitors and tell the reader that the value of the market is around £2 billion per year and you can take 1% of it. …
In this article, we will endeavour to show you how to write a competitor profile, but first of all lets suggest what we think what is a competitor profile is?
What is a competitor profile?
A competitor profile is a summary document to give you a basic understanding of one of your competitors. It’s a baseline document which cam also written before a war game to help prepare the players to understand their role int he game better. So a competitor profile should contain a brief overview of the company, insights on their strategic direction, SWOT analysis, and the latest press releases.
How to write a competitor profile
You will be able to find a mountain of information about your competitor, but it is wise to understand what to include within your profile. Take a look at your needs and the market you are playing in. What information will be helpful, what’s needed to know and what would be nice to know? Here is a list of some of the information you may want to put in your competitor…
This article is called Competitive Analysis thinking for sensational media headlines and offers our thoughts on finding the truth within newspaper reports and articles.
Have you noticed the language during Covid, Brexit, the US and UK elections? And the headlines shouting at us are getting more extreme? Words dropped into a sentence to over sensationalise a story.
“Super-gonorrhoea to spread more easily when UK leaves EU”
- Daily Star UK
They sensationalise the weather. A sprinkle of snow reported the week before as “Beast from the East set to batter the British Isles”. Or a new strain of the virus is found “Mutant virus is already spreading across UK”.
Headlines designed to cause an emotional response are particularly prevalent in politics. Whichever side you support you are either going to agree or disagree with the sentiment. There are rarely shades of grey, especially with a subject like Brexit. Here are some headline…
Here are our thoughts on why is problem-solving important in management? Often, leadership is about problem-solving, with the ability to meet and tackle difficult challenges. And a knack of making the right decisions under pressure. No one can see into the future and be exactly right when envisaging what’s to come. However, this is precisely what’s expected of senior management teams and their leaders to do.
They are the ones asked to identify opportunities, risks, anticipate the future, read the trends and then provide strategic direction to the rest of us in the business. If they succeed they will be rewarded and applauded, and if they fail to read the future and solve the problems that get in the way, it’s their responsibility and asked if they would consider another role outside the company. …
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