We are at the start of another rather unpredictable year. 2020 has left nobody unscathed. 2021 does not hold any promise of more certainty. Emily Dumas writes on her informative Competitive Intelligence blog that businesses do not function in vacuums.
They are part of a large ecosystems with external forces impacting on the business in all kinds of ways. External forces vary but competitors and customers are always in the mix. Some of these forces are normal and expected; other are left blinders suddenly overturning the apple cart. AS she writes, “a strong economy drives a sustained boost in demand for your solution. Nice. A change in your closest competitor’s lead generation strategy drives an acute drop in opportunities for your sales team. Yikes.” What would it take to manage all these known, expected and unknown and unexpected forces? Are we always on the receiving end or is there a way to somehow enhance your knowledge on what to expect in time to exploit an arising opportunity or prevent a business disaster? Yes there is. We can do a good job in managing and using information and intelligence. As an example, we can use competitive analysis to keep a tab on competitive forces like the opposition. We need to have a continuous process in place of categorizing, analysing and evaluating competitors to understand their strengths and weaknesses in comparison to our own. Competitive analysis can cover a whole range of areas, metrics, and disciplines. Some of these will have a higher priority dependent on who you are, but the more exhaustive you are the more effective the competitive analysis will be. Feel free to talk to us at IBIS™ about this topic.