Understanding your competitors, the state of the market, the trends, the opportunities and the risks is an essential part of running any company. Competitive intelligence does it systematically, from open sources only.
What is competitive intelligence
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the collection and analysis of open information about competitors and the market, in order to make better decisions: where to invest, what to watch out for, and how to position yourself against the competition.
What sets it apart from ordinary market research is focus. Market research asks what customers want. Competitive intelligence asks what competitors are doing, and why.
Questions competitive intelligence answers
- Where is the competitor’s business heading? The jobs it advertises, new partnerships and the tenders it bids on say a lot.
- Who are the real competitors in the market? Sometimes the most significant competitor is a player that isn’t on your radar.
- What products do they make, and where do they fail? Complaints, reviews and reports of malfunctions.
- Who are the key people? Who makes the decisions, and who recently moved from one company to another.
Where the information comes from
Companies leave open traces all the time: financial statements of public companies, press releases, job ads, public tenders, professional publications, employee profiles on social networks and customer feedback. None of them is secret. The skill lies in connecting them.
The red line
Competitive intelligence is not industrial espionage. It does not involve impersonation, deception, stolen data or breaking into systems. Modi-In follows the law and the ethical standards of civilian competitive intelligence research, in Israel and in the target countries.
From findings to a decision
A list of facts about a competitor doesn’t yet help you decide. The right deliverable is an intelligence picture: what was found, what it probably means, and what I recommend. That way you walk into a board meeting with an answer, not with a pile of information.
