AWARE's
Competitive Intelligence Services
Which service should I choose?

AWARE offers training in all aspects of CI - with courses aimed at newcomers to the field, as well as advanced analysis courses.

Courses include

• Introduction to CI
• CI Analysis
• Primary Research for CI
• Online information sources and Internet Intelligence
• Financial Analysis for CI practitioners
• Scenario Planning

and many more. Our courses are aimed at helping you understand what CI is, how it can help your business and how to do CI effectively.

For more information on AWARE's training services, click here.

Over the last few years, many companies have realised that their adhoc approach to finding out what their competitors are doing is insufficient if they are to compete and grow.

They realise they need something more - a professional in-house competitive intelligence service. The problem is how to establish such a service. Our "Setting up a CI Department " service is aimed at helping companies do this. The service combines our training services, mentoring services and CI Audit services and result in you not only having an effective CI function staffed by people who know what they are doing, but also knowing what information you already hold on your competitor and its significance.

For more on AWARE's Setting up a new CI Function service, click here .

• How effective is your competitive intelligence process?
• What information sources are used for CI?
• Is CI integrated into your organizational culture?

A CI audit will help you find out how effective your CI processes actually are, and more importantly will show you how you can improve your CI practices. It will look at where you need to focus to improve your overall competitive intelligence.

Ask yourself this question:

• When was the last time you were surprised by a competitor's actions?

The answer should be not for a long time.

If this is not your answer, then your CI is not as effective as it should be - and a CI audit will help you identify the gaps and show you ways to fill them.

For more on AWARE's Competitive Intelligence Audit service, click here .

Finding out what competitors are planning is part of normative business. Our competitor research services are aimed at helping you find the answers.

Whether it is finding out more about new products, pricing research, or competitive intentions doesn't matter. As long as the information can be obtained legally and ethically, we will aim to let you know what is happening.

Our competitor research services include both primary and secondary research - looking at a wide range of potential sources: trade, regional and national press; patent and trademark databases; company filing records, the Internet and so on. We are experienced in interviewing a wide range of contacts from chief executives to clerical staff - all have conveyed information that was valuable to decision making.

We can produce a full profile looking at your competitor in detail, or research a specific question only - whatever your need is, we aim to help you find the answer!

For more on AWARE's Competitive Intelligence Research services, click here.

For more on Competitor profiles, click here.

Understanding what is happening in your industry - who the current players are, and who could enter the market is essential if you are to plan for the future. Further, your sales people need to know who they are likely to encounter while selling your products or services. Knowing your place in your industry, and the industry trends is an important aspect of strategic planning.

Our industry research services are aimed at helping you take a truly objective view of what is going on in your industry. Services range from basic industry profiles and competitive landscapes outlining the key aspects of the various players or benchmarking their products to full scale industry analyses looking at all competitors and industry players and involving extensive custom research.

We also offer Trade Show Intelligence services enabling you to monitor what is offered at trade shows and industry conferences. If you want to find out what is happening in an industry, trade shows are one of the best ways to find out. We will visit competitor stands and by not being overtly linked to you, we can often find out information that would not be available to you, as a competitor. So, as well as the brochures that you may be picking up already, you'll also receive much more in-depth information about the various industry players, how they see themselves and their perspectives on what is happening in your industry overall.

For more on AWARE's Industry Research services, click here.

To find out more about AWARE's Trade Show Intelligence services, click here.

In order to compete effectively, you need to know how your products and services compare to those offered by competitors. What features and benefits do you offer that they don't? What is their quality, price, guarantee, size... and so on, compared with yours?

The information you gather can be used in various ways: to set a standard to improve your products (knowing what competitors are doing can allow you to make sure that your products are better or offer more, etc.); to help your sales people when faced with customer questions asking about product differences, and so on.

Our benchmarking research will allow you to collect the information you need to compare your products to one or several competitors and thus ensure that you stay competitive.

To find out more about AWARE's Competitor Benchmarking services, click here.

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. However faced with a myriad other priorities there can often be little time left to fully track what is happening.

We offer a value-added competitor monitoring service which tracks news on your competitors, your industry and your technologies globally. Our monitoring services will link news items over time so that you can identify trends. We'll watch out for changes to web-sites and how the competitor promotes itself online and look out for the variety of offline changes that give clues to competitor intentions: advertising, patents, stockmarket changes, financial filings, etc.

In addition, we can collect company brochures and track pricing, service levels and similar using mystery / secret shoppers.

For more on our Competitor Monitoring and Tracking service, click here.

You may think that you've just won a new customer because of the quality of your products or the attractiveness of your price but are you certain that this was the reason?

And if you've lost a contract is it really just because the competitor came in with a lower price?

To find out why a customer or prospect chose or failed to choose you is relatively simple - you just need to ask them. However sometimes they may not want to say the real reason. There can be many reasons why they may not wish to tell you directly the reasons behind their choice but they will often be willing to tell a third party.

Our Win-Loss Analysis will help you find out why. You can then use the information to emphasise your strengths from the perspective of the customer and more importantly, correct the weaknesses that led to the lost customer. You will also gather information that can help longer term sales planning and effectiveness by identifying who to target - leading to increased sales overall.

To find out more about AWARE's Win-Loss Analysis service click here.

The business environment today is moving much faster than ever before. Change is now a factor of life and for business survival it is essential to keep an eye on what is happening both within the industry and outside it.

A key step in strategic and marketing planning is the situation analysis - answering questions such as where are we now? Business environmental analysis will give you the answer to this question.

Working with you, we will look at the political, economic, sociocultural and technological factors influencing your industry and conduct a thorough strengths and weaknesses assessment of your business. Combined, you will gain information on what is happening in your business environment - what are the opportunities and threats, and what are your capabilities to match them.

For more on AWARE's Business Environmental Analysis service, click here.

AWARE can help you understand what is happening in your markets through a number of our services. Our Business Environmental Analysis Service is aimed at giving you an understanding of your overall business and industry environment.

Our competitor profiles are aimed at giving you a grip on what individual competitors are doing.

AWARE's training services offer custom in-house training that can show you how to analyse your environment and competitors - at many different levels.

Contact us for more information on any of our analysis services.

To ensure survival, businesses need to plan. They need to anticipate the future and prepare for events that could happen.

Classical approaches to forecasting include trend analysis using moving averages. These assume that business will continue in a similar fashion to the past. Unfortunately the future is not this predictable - especially when you need to think five, ten or more years ahead.

There are a number of techniques that allow businesses to anticipate what could happen in the future and to plan accordingly.

• Scenario Planning is a technique that enables organizations to look at the factors impacting their business and its environment. It uses these factors to construct pictures of possible and plausible futures and these are then used to prepare and plan for what could happen.
  
  We offer organizations support in all aspects of scenario planning:

• training, showing how to construct a scenario plan
• facilitation - working with an organization's scenario planners to ensure objectivity while the scenarios are developed
• research to identify the key uncertainty factors impacting the organization.

• War Gaming models what could happen in the overall competitive environment - and aims to anticipate competitor strategies.
  
  The technique is also particularly useful in identifying any false assumptions or blindspots about the industry, customer requirements or the general business environment. These blindspots - if not identified - can lead to companies failing to prepare for what is actually going on in their surroundings. Instead plans and strategies are developed based on the companies beliefs rather than reality.
  
  We offer organizations support in all aspects of War Gaming

• consultancy - helping you plan and carry out a successful war game.
• facilitation - working with employees during an actual war game so as to ensure no cheating and that game progresses.
• research to identify the key information about competitors required for an effective war-game.

Click here for more information on scenario planning and how AWARE can help you.

For more information on war gaming, click here.

All AWARE's services are aimed at helping organizations succeed, irrespective of their size. We are happy working with both major quoted companies and small family businesses. At the same time, we recognise that SMEs and large businesses often have different concerns and issues.

Small and medium sized businesses often lack the staff and the budgets to launch the full-blown marketing campaigns available to larger organizations. At the same time, their information needs are just as relevant and important - if not more so as many SMEs are vulnerable to attack from their larger competitors who do have the research budgets.

Recognising that budgets will be more limited, we offer a number of inexpensive services to help SMEs. These include our customised competitive intelligence training services, competitor monitoring and tracking, win-loss analysis and similar services.

We can also support SMEs more generally in their overall marketing efforts, through marketing planning support and strategy consultancy. Our aim is to help our clients become self-sufficient so that they can do as much as possible themselves. (You can also download a paper on Competitive Intelligence Services on a Small Budget for ideas on how SMEs can do effective CI )

Our marketing support personnel are expert marketers - who have achieved CIM chartered status. Our principle consultant was the first general editor and a major contributor to Croner's Marketing - A practical Management Guide, aimed at helping SMEs succeed in marketing. He also teaches the Marketing Research and Information module for the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing's Professional Diploma in Marketing.

More information on our SME services.

If you are an SME and would like us to help you compete more effectively, contact us today.

Our Interim Management Services aim to provide you with the experts you need to cover key staff absence and shortages, whatever the reason. Our interim managers are experts in their field, so you can ensure that your CI operations continue running and that you stay competitive.

Interim managers can be taken on for either long-term (six-months plus), short-term or part-time contracts. They can also be kept on a retainer basis, with availability spread over a long period but for only a few days or weeks at a time perhaps to help with end-of-month peaks, or to provide back-up for other staff away on day-release training.

Click here to find out more about AWARE's CI Outsourcing and Interim Management service. (Please note: this services is currently only available to UK based companies).