Introduction To Profiles | Competitive Intelligence | Help Needed, Facilitating Change, act quickly, loosing money

When it comes time to gathering information about your competition, it is a good idea to find out as much as you can. Try to compile as complete a profile as possible on each of your competitors. Doing so will not only help you understand them but it will also help you learn how to exceed them. You can also gain insight into industry trends.

Which data do you need to include in your profile? Well this will depend on a variety of factors. Examine your needs and observe the market. What information would be helpful? This is also a good time to decide how you will be organizing the data.

A key section of the company profile is one that analyzes why they are successful. What is their strategy? To determine this, understand that there are a few different kinds of strategies they could use.

You will also want to determine how your competition reacts to any market changes and include that in the profile. Their reaction may be deliberate, or it may not. Analyze the data you found to gain an understanding to this aspect of the market.

A good way to stay competitive is to determine exactly what it is you need to do in order to remain a major force in your industry. This is called your “critical success factors”.

There are other things to determine when analyzing the market, industry, and competition.

You may be new to competitive intelligence. Once you gather and analyze information, you may be hesitant to make any changes to your company for fear that your analysis may be off.

Your information and analysis may have alerted you to the fact that your company needs to make some major changes in order to survive. This information can come in many forms such as a competitor who is in control of a large portion of the market share.