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?

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.

It would be convenient to have a single competitor analysis template that could be rolled out as needed, populated and presented. All in one easy-to-use package. Unfortunately, that is not the way of things. The tables, charts and other such forms of presenting data will vary across companies, by competitor and by focus of research e.g. product comparisons, sales benchmarking and so on.