Keeping up-to-date with what your competitors are doing is a key aspect of competitor intelligence. You need to know when they launch a new product, change their prices or appoint a new manager. Each of these can have an impact on your own organizational success. The problem is time - do you honestly have the time to read several trade journals each week or month on the off-chance that something relevant is published.
One solution adopted by many companies is to subscribe to a clipping service. The advantage here is price, and coverage. You can cover numerous journals at a low price. However clipping services lack value judgements so you risk also getting superfluous and irrelevant mentions without any analysis putting the news into context.
We offer a value-added competitor monitoring service which tracks news on your competitors, your industry and your technologies globally. We include as standard, analysis and will link news items over time so that you can identify trends. Costs are based on the number of news stories, but can be capped at a fixed sum per month - with only the most important items being reported.
Our standard monitoring service focuses on news stories, but we can also track changes to web-sites, web or online presence, advertising, patents, stockmarket changes, financial filings, or whatever you require. In addition, we can collect company brochures and track pricing, service levels and similar using mystery/secret shoppers.
We can produce regular analysed reports detailing the activities of your competitors as indicated by both published information, or through, our custom research services unpublished (but public domain) information.
AWARE has access to thousands of different news sources, and can report on:
Press releases
News stories from national, local and trade press
Market analyst reports
Product reviews
Product launches
Recent contracts
Senior Management Information.
In addition to this we can monitor and report on other competitor / market activity:
Changes to share prices
Financial reports
Other financial activity (e.g. interim financial statements, M&A news)
Patent filings indicating R&D activity
Price changes
New appointments
We also monitor on-line for information:
Changes to a competitor's web pages
Newsgroups and blogs to see what people and pundits are saying
Email discussion lists.
Search engine ranking.
Reciprocal links
Online advertising.
Online recruitment.
This gives a sample of the type of information that can be tracked. There are many other areas that can be looked at - planning applications, trademark filings, customer testimonials.... Let us know what you need and we'll tell you whether we can get it for you. Reports can be produced weekly, monthly or as regularly as required.
or click here to contact us about any of our CI services!
Books - Co-opertition
Recommended Book
Co-opetition : 1. a revolutionary mindset that redefines competition and cooperation; 2. the game theory strategy that's changing the game of business Adam M Brandenburger & Barry J Nalebuff Buy UK £ or US$
Michael Porter described this book as "the most important single contribution" in taking his original ideas on ways of achieving competitive advantage forward. The book is easy to read, inexpensive and contains numerous ideas to help reshape and challenge thought processes. The writers develop Porter's 5 forces model, and introduce a sixth force. They emphasise the strategic advantages of co-operation and look at game theory as a way of approaching business strategy.
1) Greed - Are you satisfied with what you've achieved or are you always seeking more, and never consolidating and strengthening what you currently have? 2) Opinion - Do you ever dismiss ideas without analysis? There have been many opportunities that were missed because opinionated management failed to see the wider picture. 3) Routine - Just because something worked in the past does not mean that it will continue to work in the future. 4) Emotion - Is the reason for your decision based on analysis, or emotion? Many managers are driven by their fears and desires without ever stopping to justify the reason for their fear or hatred or love. Often these prove to be unjustified and unjustifiable. 5) Ego - Do you make decisions because you are the cleverest, the biggest, the market leader? Are you obsessed with your own image and abilities? Many leaders in the past also thought that they were invincible. A quick look at history shows that they were not! 6) Success - Over-confidence is dangerous and can blind you to competitors seeking to emulate your success. 7) Hope - Can you justify your reasons why things will improve, or are you just burying your head in the sand, and refusing to see reality?
These seven deadly business sins are based on some work by Ben Gilad, one of the foremost Competitive Intelligence experts. Businesses need to understand their blindspots - what they would rather not see, and work to remove them. Each of these seven sins is a type of blindspot if it dominates the thinking within the company. It's OK to have each to a certain degree, balanced by the others. (All businesses need to believe in themselves, have hope, aim to make money....). The problem is when one aspect starts to govern the way things are done in the company, preventing rational and logical thought.
Public training
Competitive Intelligence Training
Do you need to
know more about
Competitive Intelligence?
Public Training Workshops - ProfitNet Training Course on Competitor/Competitive Intellgence
Tuesday 15 September / Wed 30 September
University of Brighton - Postgraduate Computer Suite, Watts Building.
Cost: £550 + VAT
A two-day workshop split into two halves (with practical work to be competed during the two-week gap) focusing on ways to use competitive intelligence to best effect within organisational strategy.
Learn how to discover valuable information about your competitors and use this to gain competitve advantage over them in today's changeable markets.
This is one of a series of workshops aimed at helping businesses combat the economic downturn and prepare them for future success under the auspices of the Collaborative Training Centre attached to the University of Brighton.
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.
