Our sample reports give examples of competitor profiles, and competitor monitoring reports. Owing to client confidentiality, the monitoring report sample is very old, and some of the companies mentioned have gone out of business or have since been taken over by other organisations.
When monitoring competitors, it is important to place information gathered into context.
Without analysis and interpretation the information will be less useful. Potentially important trends and patterns may be missed, or the information's significance may be over or under-estimated. Using such information in decision making could lead to wrong decisions being made. Unless information is collected with the aim of using it for business decisions it has little or no value - it is the analysis stages of the CI process that adds value.
The example monitoring report shows how even basic analysis can add value to simple news clips - by linking the news items to other news stories and by highlighting trends in the gathered data.
Find out more about how AWARE can help you monitor your competitors.
To view the sample monitoring report click here.
Competitor profiles offer a way of looking at a competitor, gathering all relevant facts into a single report.
Ideally, there should be different competitor profiles for different intelligence users - based on the user's key intelligence topics or KITs. (For more information on KITs, see our brief guide to competitive intelligence). Thus the content of each profile may vary. For example:
- A sales profile would look at competitor sales tactics, product comparisons, pricing, etc. but would have less information on finances;
- Acompetitor profile aimed at senior management might include a full strengths and weaknessess assessment and an analysis of the competitor's threat to the business.
The example competitor profile would be aimed at senior decision makers - to give them an instant overview of the salient points on a competitor. The profile is actually a "fact-sheet" so that the key points are available on one (or at the most, two) sheets of paper - perhaps to check before a strategy meeting.
The aim of the sample profile is to give you ideas on the sort of information that can be included along with a possible layout.
It is important to realise that this is just an example. Different intelligence users may prefer different formats and levels of detail, and so the exact format and layout you should use should be discussed with your intelligence users, rather than copied from our sample. Often, a printed version will not even be available - with all the key information held in a competitor database, on the organisational intranet.
We also have a number of templates that we use internally for compiling competitor profiles, for financial analysis and for benchmarking competitors. We include several templates as examples with our training courses (rather than the single template sample offered here) If these are of interest, then contact us.
The sample profile included here is only available to business users. If you are not using a business or company e-mail you may find that you cannot gain access to the profile download pages. If this is the case, and you have a justifiable business reason for obtaining the profiles, please
. explaning why you need the profiles.
Find out more about AWARE Competitor Profiles
To access the sample competitor profile click here.
Competitive Intelligence for Business Success