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About Us > Help & Support > FAQs > Question 1: Finding Basic Competitor Intelligence

Marketing & Competitive Intelligence FAQ
Finding Basic Competitor Intelligence


We are currently in the process of performing our market research for a new short-term investment firm that we wish to establish and we were wondering if you may be able to provide us with some insight regarding how to obtain specific data on our competitors. For example, we are looking for general business information such as the year established, number of employees, annual sales, market share, annual growth rate, and budget information.

Most of this information is in the public domain, and it should be fairly easy to collect for most markets. In many countries there is a legal obligation to file this kind of information. In most of Europe, for example, annual sales and number of employees can be found in the company accounts of all but the smallest businesses. In the US, public companies file similar data via the SEC and this data is freely available at the SEC web site (http://www.sec.gov). Even where such information is not available from company registries (for example Companies House, in the UK), company information agencies such as Dun & Bradstreet usually obtain such data as part of their overall business reporting operations. Thus D&B reports typically include year established, number of employees, annual sales over 3 years (allowing you to get a growth rate) and more.

Market share information will need to be calculated using knowledge of the total sales of all your competitors – although there are frequently detailed market and industry reports available which include estimates of total market size. From this, the market share of any individual company can often be estimated. Such reports are held in the major business libraries and can usually be purchased online from the producer. It is also possible to download selected parts from host database companies such as Factiva, Lexis-Nexis or Dialog.

The only questionable information is budget information - which may be internal to the company and not readily available. (I'm assuming you mean internal departmental budgets or purchasing/investment budgets). It is, however, sometimes possible to assess investment budgets by identifying purchases and investments over a fixed period using details held in the cash flow statements and balance sheets filed in the publicly available sources.

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Quick Tip

A woman walked up to the manager of a department store and asked. Are you hiring any help? The manager answered: No - We already have all the staff we need! The woman responded: Good - then would you mind getting some one to wait on me?

How is your customer service? Are you risking sales and customer dissatisfaction because the staff you have do not focus sufficiently on your customers? We can all recognise the department store or shoe shop with sales agents busy talking to each other about what they were doing the night before, rather than helping us make a purchase. The same applies to non-retail businesses. Rather than hire new staff, make sure that the staff you have focus on the customers you need.

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Books - Smart Services

Recommended Book

Smart Services
Smart Services: Competitive Information Strategies, Solutions and Success Stories for Service Businesses
Deborah C Sawyer
Buy UK £ or US$

Read our review of this book

The front cover of "Smart Services" includes a quote from Andrew Garvin, the CEO of Find/SVP saying: "Finally a book that nails down what every service business needs to know about competition and competitive intelligence. 'Smart Services' offers competitive information strategies that firms can put to immediate use." I don't think that I could have given a better summary and description of this excellent book.

For a thorough review of this book check out FreePint's book review. (FreePint is an excellent portal site and discussion forum for the overall information industry, and is well recommended - and used by over 70,000 information professionals world-wide).

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For more recommendations visit our book selection.

 

Competitive Intelligence Training

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Finding Competitive Intelligence using Online Sources

AWARE consultants are experts at discovering competitor information online and have developed a market-leading course on Finding Competitive Intelligence using Online Sources. This course has been given as an in-house course to numerous companies across industries (IT, publishing, telecoms, chemicals....) and countries, as well as publicly at SCIP annual and European conferences, the London International Online Information Conferences and other similar events.

The workshop has received high praise for its unique approach to finding competitive intelligence on the Internet. The workshop - available as a half-day summary, full day or 2-day in-depth training course with extensive practical online sessions - teaches attendees how to find actionable competitive intelligence rather than just present a list of sources that quickly date. Like all AWARE's in-house training, the course can be customised to focus on industry or competitive area.

For more information on this workshop and how it can help you become a more effective Internet researcher check out our Competitive Intelligence Training and ask us about our courses on finding CI information.

 

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Our services in competitive intelligence research, competitor analysis and CI training will help you integrate and use competitive and marketing intelligence in your business, strategic and marketing planning processes. Whether you need research, advice or training, our mission is to support our clients so that they achieve their growth objectives.

For the best UK & European competitive intelligence and competitor analysis services, contact us today.

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Last page / site update: Thursday, May 5, 2011

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