Know The Importance Of Competitive Intelligence For Your Organization

Competitive intelligence is a method that defines, analyzes and gathers information about competitors, customers and products or any other information that can be essential for improving the strategies required to have a successful business.

For this, the FMCG industry intelligence make use of two prominent systems which are Market Intelligence (MI) and Market Research (MR). They are beneficial for

• Having a proper outlook of the market in terms of its demographics, size and region

• Having feedback from the customers or other prospects about a particular service or product. This helps in understanding the substitutes and alternatives of being known as buyers.

• Enlisting the various companies that are competing with you, even those that are not evident to you.

This is the reason why CI even works as a media intelligence platform so as to complement other associated findings. Acquiring in-depth knowledge about the efforts and plans of the competitors helps you in creating defensive and offensive strategies that let you have an edge over the market. See this site for further information regarding crisis monitoring.

Remember, the method of getting this information needs a well-planned approach, analytic experience and organizational skills. If you are not sure of these implications then it best to hire a professional company for the task. 

How Can The Results of Competitive Intelligence Be Used?

Once you have got a list of potential companies who are ruling the market, the next step is to develop a plan, after which appropriate professionals must be recruited. Such plans should set the desired objectives and specify how the achieved results can be implemented.

A few questions that you can consider while developing a full-proof strategy for your business are

• Will the competitor launch a new service or product?

• Will it expand the sales force?

• Will it enter into a whole new market?

• Are there any prosperous partnership or mergers?

Key Tools To Observe When Preparing A Strategic Plan

The aforementioned questions cannot be asked directly, for this you have to be vigilant on certain tools of the company such as their

• Trade publications, website content, patent filings, newsletter and most importantly new job postings

• Monitor their social media promotions, discussions, charts or forum posts which would unfold useful information about the various developments within their business

• Another exceptional platform is the trade shows or conferences, where you can gather tons of information about the competitor, like their number of staff, collateral, marketing budget and future plans.

After having detailed information, you should integrate them for the benefit of your company. The end goals must be believable and realistic when presented. CI even comes with Early Warning Systems (EWS) that works as an immediate alert about the competitor’s plan which might affect your business.