Sales teams are often the people demanding competitive intelligence. But why? How does competitive intelligence support the sales function?

Keeping pace with competitors is a constant battle. Here we outline some of the strategies that companies use to stay ahead.

Is it safe for your business to conduct competitive intelligence research? While CI is practised legally and ethically by most large companies, it is important that practitioners understand the law and their obligations.

The good news is that anyone can conduct competitive intelligence research and gain an advantage over competitors. The bad news is that the work takes time, perseverance and know-how.

The biggest impact on timeproject length comes from the time required to find and contact primary sources. Typically this might be one or two weeks to find sources and another two, maybe three, weeks to contact them and schedule conversations. This last part is the one that the analyst can least control - it depends largely on the source’s availability.

Many of our clients are hiring a competitive intelligence agency for the first time. They need to scope out the research and it can be helpfult to have a ready-made starting point. What questions should frame a research proposal? What is it possible to discover about competitors? What is a good structure?

Latest list of competitive intelligence software specialists. We have focused on companies that specifcally target competitive inelligence, rather than more general software including social media monitoring, press monitoring or business analytics, that also plays some role in competitive intelligence.

We sometimes get asked by clients whether we can conduct ‘competitor’ analysis of their own business. Let’s look at why clients ask for this type of research, given that they already know their answer, what are the pros and cons, and whether Aqute would agree to do such research.