Competitive Intelligence Software Selection Guide

With limited budgets and processes and staff handling large volumes of external data, organizations may fail to make informed decisions, leading to missed opportunities.

Insufficient funds for competitive intelligence staff, tools, and automation.
Dealing with large volumes of external data that may be outdated or inaccurate.
Lack of processes for storing and sharing CI insights across the organization.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Most leading vendors in this space offer similar core features, so focus on data sources, output, usability, price, and differences in key features most relevant to your requirements.

Impact and Result

Learn which software can compare your product, brand, or company ranking against top competitors using industry benchmarks and best practices.
Gain insights into competitor performance at a level of depth that can benefit sales and other departments, such as product development and customer support.

Competitive Intelligence Software Selection Guide Research & Tools

1. Competitive Intelligence Software Selection Guide: Competitive intelligence software and related digital marketing tool vendors can be categorized by their primary focus areas: SEO, market intelligence, and competitive analysis.

Learn CI software capabilities and trends, define your requirements and use cases, and discover CI software vendors.

2. CI Vendor Evaluation Workbook – Use this workbook to select a CI vendor. List high-value use cases, technical requirements, qualifications, implementation deliverables, and total cost of ownership to make an informed decision.

Use this workbook to direct your CI vendor selection. List high-value use cases and whether they are must-haves, should-haves, could-haves, or won’t-haves. Note other functional requirements, such as integrations and security, as well as other qualifications that vendors must include. Describe deliverables required from the vendor to support implementation and use of the product, and add specifications for requesting vendor pricing.

Competitive Intelligence Software Selection Guide

The role of CI software in shaping business strategy and innovation.

Analyst perspective

Competitive intelligence (CI) is vital because it will provide foresight in a rapidly changing business world. It equips businesses with the knowledge to anticipate market shifts, adapt strategies proactively, and maintain a competitive edge by tracking and monitoring their competitors.

Using CI, companies can make informed decisions on competitors, people, and media to capture new market opportunities, enhance their product offerings, and drive profitability and growth. In essence, competitive intelligence is a critical asset for any business seeking to stay ahead in a dynamic and competitive marketplace.

Competitive intelligence software has emerged as an indispensable asset as businesses strive to navigate today's complex market landscape. This technology offers critical insights into competitors' strategies and market trends, empowering companies to stay ahead, make informed decisions, and proactively adapt to shifts. Enhanced by AI and machine learning, this software is set for robust growth and is projected to double by 2030 (Fortune Business Insights, 2024). It's not just a tool for today – it's essential for tomorrow's success.

Joanne Morin Correia, Principal Director, Marketing

Joanne Morin Correia
Principal Director, Marketing
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive summary

Pain Points

Obstacles

Info-Tech's Approach

Insufficient funds for competitive intelligence staff, tools, and automation
Large volumes of external data that may be outdated or inaccurate
Lack of processes for storing and sharing CI insights across the organization

With limited budgets and processes and staff handling large volumes of external data, organizations may fail to make informed decisions, leading to missed opportunities.

Insufficient expertise and inadequate in-house training for CI
Limited or no metrics to determine your ROI for the CI evaluation
Absence of methods and resources for handling competitive intelligence data

The inability to compete effectively results in stagnant sales growth, missed market and sales opportunities, company and brand value depreciation, and challenges in attracting talent, partners, or future investors.

Learn which software can compare your product, brand, or company ranking against top competitors using industry benchmarks and best practices.
Gain insights into competitor performance at a level of depth that can benefit sales and other departments, such as product development and customer support.

By aligning the CI function with sales and marketing priorities and properly resourcing it, you can gain insights to win against competitors' products and services.

Info-Tech Insight

Most leading vendors in this space offer similar core features, so focus on data sources, output, usability, price, and differences in key features that are most relevant to your requirements.

Info-Tech's methodology for selecting an appropriate CI solution

	1. Understand CI Software Capabilities and Trends	2. Define Your Requirements	3. Select Your Vendor
Phase Steps	Define CI software Review table stakes and differentiating capabilities Explore CI software market trends	Streamline requirements gathering Build your vendor evaluation workbook	Discover key players in the CI software landscape Make your selection Prepare for implementation
Phase Outcomes	Consensus on CI software scope and key capabilities	Top-level use cases and requirements Vendor evaluation workbook	Vendor shortlist Implementation considerations

Combine this research with our CI and SOV research to accelerate the process

Book a call with an analyst to help you with your software selection:

Combine expert analyst guidance with this blueprint's vendor analysis and tools.
Follow a structured, efficient process using the CI software methodology to set up and justify CI resources, identify your use cases and critical requirements, and find the best fit.
Leverage our contract review services to level the playing field through negotiation.

Build Competitive Intelligence to Improve Sales Win Rates

Selecting the Right Share of Voice Platform to Manage and Monitor Your Influence

Phase 1

Understand CI Software Capabilities and Trends

Phase 1

1.1 Define CI software
1.2 Review table stakes and differentiating capabilities
1.3 Explore CI software market trends

Phase 2

2.1 Streamline requirements gathering
2.2 Build your vendor evaluation workbook

Phase 3

3.1 Discover key players in the CI software landscape
3.2 Make your selection
3.3 Prepare for implementation

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

Understand what CI software is.
Define which CI software features are table stakes (standard) and which are key differentiating functionalities.
Review key trends in the CI software market.

This phase involves the following participants:

CI, product, or marketing manager (or whoever is taking on that role, if not a full-time role).
Marketing and sales representative. The solution will support overall efforts.
Other stakeholders who will be responsible for creating or maintaining CI-related plans (e.g. IT, Product, Development, Finance).

Market vs. competitive intelligence

Market intelligence software focuses on understanding the overall market dynamics and identifying new opportunities.

Market Intelligence Software

Focus: Gathers and analyzes data on market trends, customer behavior, segmentation, and demand patterns.

Data Sources: Collects data from reports, surveys, social media, customer feedback, and internal data.

Insights: Provides a comprehensive market view to identify opportunities and inform decisions on products, pricing, and market entry.

Strategic Planning: Monitors trends, identifies opportunities, and assesses market impact for strategic planning.

Competitive intelligence software monitors competitors and makes tactical decisions to gain a competitive edge.

Competitive Intelligence Software

Focus: Collects and analyzes competitor information, including products, pricing, marketing, distribution, and market positioning.

Data Sources: Uses diverse sources such as competitor websites, news articles, industry reports, filings, patents, social media, and discussions.

Insights: Provides awareness of competitors' activities, strengths, weaknesses, market share, and potential threats and opportunities.

Tactical Decision-Making: Helps businesses decide pricing, product differentiation, marketing, and sales strategies to gain a competitive advantage.

Intersection of competitive intelligence and digital marketing tools

Categorization of CI Software Market:

Competitor Intelligence: Tracks competitors' activities and strategies.
Market Analysis: Provides insights into market trends and consumer behavior.
SEO & Content Marketing: Optimizes search visibility and content strategies.
Brand & Customer Experience: Measures brand reputation and customer sentiment.
Press & Advertising Monitoring: Gauges media coverage and advertising impact.

Category Relationships:

Overlap and Integration: These areas often intersect. For instance, competitor intelligence can enhance SEO strategies, and market analysis informs targeted content creation.
Vendor Competition: Many vendors cover multiple categories, offering tools that span competitor intelligence, market analysis, and brand monitoring.
Integrated Tools: Tools serve multiple purposes, such as combining competitor insights with content optimization to provide a comprehensive view of the competitive landscape.
Strategic Benefits: Combining these tools supports effective market positioning and customer engagement, enhancing decision-making and performance by integrating competitive and market intelligence.

Competitive Intelligence Software Selection Guide visualization

The role of CI software in shaping business strategy and innovation.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Guided Implementation 1: CI Research Requirements

Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
Call 2: Review your documented scope and objectives against your internal interview questions, answers on resources, and budget.
Call 3: Assess your company’s CI capabilities and budget. Modify or add any requirements as needed.

Guided Implementation 2: CI Research & Vendor Selection

Call 1: Develop a CI research framework and best practices for competitive analysis of sales.
Call 2: Review competitive win/loss analysis results and prioritize research.
Call 3: Review CI vendor analysis for testing CI results.
Call 4: Review findings from the software testing to make a selection.
Call 5: Identify the vendor relationship between current capabilities and automation.