Octopus Competitive Intelligence

We have mentioned this once or twice. But in case you haven’t read one of our articles before, we will repeat it. Great Competitive Intelligence is about asking great questions. And spending time doing excellent analysis of the information you find is the cherry on the cake. In this article, we ask, is Competitive Intelligence without Key Assumption Analysis just lots of words and graphs on a page? Once you have the questions and found the information, the analysis matters. It makes a Competitive Intelligence Analyst stand out in the crowd of mediocrity. So yes, Intelligence without analysis and some thought is just a lot of words and graphs. And Key Assumption Analysis should be on top of your to-do list.  What is a Key Assumption? A Key Assumption is any hypothesis accepted to be true and which forms the basis of the assessment. It’s the most crucial structured analysis technique you can use Within the world of Geo-Political Intelligence, structural analysis is more common than i...

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for businesses seeking an edge over their competitors. With the right approach, it can be used to identify and connect with a competitor’s key customers. Networking through LinkedIn helps you gain insights into what your competitors are doing. And how they engage with their customers. This is the first of many articles to give our readers real-life tips from people who do competitive intelligence for a living. LinkedIn is a handy platform for competitive intelligence and market intelligence too. And it has grown immeasurably since we first came across it in the mid-2000s. This article has been written based on the analysis we have conducted for years. It shows one way how to use LinkedIn to find your competitor’s key customers. It’s something we can do for you as part of a project, or you can do it yourself. There are also more standard ways of  Using LinkedIn for Researching Your Competitors . The power of LinkedIn is well known. Get past the ChatG...

Competitive Intelligence Within Business Development Welcome to our weekly raw and unfiltered straight-talking look at all things associated with competitive intelligence and associated insight. This week's episode can be found here: We have created this article to accompany the podcast. This week we discuss the role of competitive intelligence in the lifeblood of any business, business development. The Role Of Business Development On our minds today is the role of business development. And its ability to be aided by insight, specifically competitive intelligence services. What’s happening now is that we’re seeing the first evolutions of what might be loosely considered a regressive business landscape for at least the foreseeable future. And irrespective of what central banks do with their interest rates, there’s already a shock wave regarding investment markets and appetite for growth. Also and with governmental aspirations and attitudes towards international business development,...

Any decent competitive intelligence project starts with excellent questions. The quality of the questions influences the quality of the answers received.  Defining questions is crucial to ensure that you get the information you need. Here are ten quick ways to express and structure excellent questions: Specific An excellent question should be precise and focused on a particular topic. Ensuring that the answer provides the necessary and the required detail. Relevant The question should be relevant to the context or the problem you are trying to solve. Are they any questions that are just nice-to-know rather than must-know or need-to-know? Don’t waste time on nice-to-knows. They are not relevant to the problem. And these questions will likely be the hardest to answer.  What is competitive intelligence ? Competitive intelligence is the finding & critical analysis of information to make sense of what’s happening & why. Predict what’s going to happen & give the options ...

Why Does Your Sales Team Need Competitive Intelligence?  All businesses aim to become successful in their fields. Hence, an intelligent strategy is helpful in this pursuit. Competitive intelligence lends that helping hand to enterprises, allowing them to sail through the sales journey efficiently. It is referred to the engagements that focus on gathering information about a company’s external environment via research. The data collected covers vital aspects of the competitor, customer profiles, and cost, among others. This intelligence is then analysed by the sales team to make informed business decisions, overcome objections, and close deals quickly and efficiently.  Competitive intelligence only has value if it is put in the right hands, i.e., the sales and marketing professionals. These professionals use competitive intelligence to help gain vital information about the competitors and monitor them from time to time. This intelligence may cover competitors’ financial perform...

Outfoxing Your Competitors Using Competitor Analysis In today’s hyper-competitive world, you must conduct competitor analysis to stay ahead. Competitor analysis involves identifying your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Then use this insight to develop strategies that will enable you to outsmart them. This article discusses three keys to using competitor analysis to beat your rivals. Here is another article which maybe of interest  How to Use Competitive Analysis for Better Decisions . Identify Your Competitors The first step in a competitor analysis is identifying your competitors. A bit obvious, but very important. Also, sometimes they are not whom you think. You need to know who your competitors are and what they are doing. This includes their products or services, pricing strategies, marketing efforts, and target customers. Once you have identified your competitors, you can analyse their strengths and weaknesses. Analyse Your Competitors’ Strengths And Weaknesses The seco...

Competitive Intelligence And ChatGPT To Help Create Valuable Insight ChatGPT is a powerful tool that’s starting to reshape how we all work, live, and to an extent, how we do business. AI is making moves. It’s up to us to keep up or get left behind. This article is all about competitive intelligence and ChatGPT. AI will be the greatest thing that’s ever happened to the insight industry. Creativity, thinking, creating scenarios, and new routes to market. Analysing what’s going to happen next will set those out within Competitive intelligence. Almost every industry will change for better or worse.  Just Like Drinking A Vodka Martini Is Not Going To Make You James Bond Using ChatGPT to research your competitors and take the information found as true is not going to make you a competitive intelligence guru. Just like drinking a Vodka Martini (even with a green olive) is not going to make you James Bond. It’s been data-driven that, data-driven this for a few years. Competitive intelligen...