Analyze advice and ratings on competitive intelligence software programs before you make your purchase to determine whether or not you have the best product for your own unique working situation. There are many facets of gleaning information, and different programs address different situations.

Before investing time and money in marketing intelligence software, determine what your options are in the marketplace and find out how the various programs work for other professionals. Some ways you might want to gather advice and analyze ratings include the following options:

1. Discover ways to analyze competitive intelligence systems through printed resources.

2. Use information from detailed reports to determine the best business competition software.

3. Glean advice and ratings on competitive intelligence software via web articles and rating sites.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Garner information on ways to analyze market intelligence software by reading books and blogs

Competitive intelligence software tends to be highly customized for each client and their particular needs, so reviews and surveys sometimes fall short of the mark. Books on the market offer advice on ways to evaluate programs to determine whether or not the software suits your unique needs. Blogs offer opinions from other people who use the software and give feedback on how it works for them.

I recommend: Information Today highlights "Assessing Competitive Intelligence Software: A Guide to Evaluating CI Technology," a book which compares and evaluates four of the popular competitive intelligence software packages on the market. It offers tips for evaluating the software on your own, so you easily determine a product's strengths and problem areas. Monash Research offers a publication called Text Technologies, which discusses competitive intelligence technologies. It also offers research blogs for topics such as software memories and technology issues.

Sift through reports on business intelligence software to find which programs work best for you

Get the inside scoop on various competitive intelligence management software programs to determine which best provide the information you require. Detailed reports show the pros and cons of programs, so you will know what to expect before you purchase.

I recommend: Fuld & Company offers a detailed report on intelligence software that readers have access to upon registration on the website. It also offers a reference book, dictionary and white papers to registered users. Traction Software offers reports detailing an analysis of the top six competitive intelligence software vendors. It also provides an up-to-date comparison of software programs to qualifying practitioners for free.

Look into competitive intelligence solutions by checking ratings and articles discussing them

Find out how well a competitive intelligence program actually works by reading articles on usage and going to websites where people rate the software they use.

I recommend: When looking for ratings for competitive intelligence software and solutions, consider looking at ciseek.com. This site lists a variety of competitive intelligence software programs, defines what each one does and offers ratings for each program based on a star system. CBS Interactive offers a list of white papers discussing competitive intelligence software, discussing the pros and cons of programs. The easy-to-use links take you to websites with more information on the topics discussed.

Competition intelligence (CI) helps business learn about their competitors, including the competition’s suppliers, materials and technology. Competitive intelligence solutions also help businesses learn about legal, market and political changes that affect their business. In order for CI to be effective, businesses must research the competition regularly and use the data they gather. Business competition software can help companies keep track of and use this crucial information.

Competitive intelligence software allows your business to create profiles of business competitors and to organize information about the competition for analysis. Many of today’s competitive intelligence solutions are designed to fully integrate with your company’s software and to help you at every stage of competitive intelligence: data gathering, aggregating, indexing, analysis, searching, implementation and collaboration. When selecting your market intelligence software, consider:

1. Information sources that can provide you with information for your competitive intelligence application;

2. Competitive intelligence software that works with the information you want to analyze;

3. Integrated and specialist business competition software packages.

Action Steps
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Select competitive intelligence systems to gather facts about your competition

In order to use business intelligence software, your company needs to gather information about competitors, but not all competitive intelligence systems help you collect information. A service or program that provides you with competitor reports or general data you can feed into your competition intelligence software programs is key. This data can include information about a competitor's due diligence, investors, media coverage and more.

I recommend: Cipher offers solutions that allow you to create competitor profiles, run market and industry audits, or check a company's investors. Factiva allows your company to gather intelligence from more than 14,000 business and news sources and even allows you to organize information into charts and graphs so that you don't have to read every article about the competition.

Choose competitor intelligence software to organize, analyze and report

Even if your company is vigilant in gathering information about the competition, that information is useless until it is rendered usable. Good competitive intelligence management software lets you transform raw information into material that can be searched, analyzed and reported. Good programs let you easily share the information with your marketing, management and other decision-making teams.

I recommend: Competitive Vision is a software program that lets you enter raw data about competitors and generate frameworks and models that you can share with your team members. Strategy Software is a desk-top software and a secure web-based software that lets you organize analysis about your competitors and send the information out directly to your decision-makers.

Select an advertising competitive intelligence tool to track marketing efforts

You will want to know not only what your competitors are doing, but also how they are reaching their customers. Marketing intelligence software can help you because market intelligence software lets you gather and analyze your competition's advertising and marketing strategy. Marketing intelligence software lets you understand what keywords your competitors are using for pay-per-click campaigns and even how they are structuring their advertising campaigns.

I recommend: VMS provides advertising competitive intelligence solutions that let you keep track of competitors' marketing strategies. VMS is powerful because the company lets you see how the competition is using broadcast, newspaper, print, radio, Internet, and other media to advertise. AdGooroo keeps track of your competitors' online marketing efforts and specifically focuses on search marketing competitive intelligence. If your industry mainly advertises online, selecting a company like this, with its online focus, is a good idea.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  It's important to know what your competition is doing, but before you start using a competitive intelligence software program, you need to understand who your competition is. You cannot assume that your competition is limited to similar types of businesses in your immediate area. To find out who you should be keeping an eye on, ask your customers who they considered before they selected your company. The answers may surprise you. Your competition may include online companies located half a world away and even companies in other industries offering parallel services or products.

Competitive intelligence involves gathering data about competitors, analyzing the data and using the findings to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Competitive intelligence software simplifies the process by providing templates for entering information and using models, forecasting tools, and online research to analyze competitive data. It's important to understand some of the key terms before choosing a vendor of competitive intelligence software.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Competitors

Before gathering and analyzing information about your competitors, it's important to figure out who those competitors are. Competition is found at various levels and from areas you may not have considered competition. It goes beyond those who make items similar to your product.

I recommend: Read an article from the Toolkit Media Group about the different levels of market competition and how to identify them.

Profiling

Profiling is used to gather intelligence about competitors and enter information. It discovers financial, marketing and company data as well as trends and events. Information for profiling usually must be gathered beforehand and entered into a competitive intelligence software application.

I recommend: See OneSource to get an overview and definition of company profiling.

Five Forces

Five Forces, developed by Michael Porter, is a model of competitive analysis used by competitive intelligence software. It states that all industries are influenced by five forces.

I recommend: Get a thorough explanation of Five Forces from the Internet Center for Management and Business Administration.

SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis is used to evaluate industries and companies. It stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

I recommend: See Marketing Teacher for a quick lesson in SWOT analysis.

Value Chain

The Value Chain framework is a model used to analyze activities that help a company create competitive advantage and value. It includes an analysis of inbound and outbound activities and logistics, marketing and sales efforts.

I recommend: Get an overview of Value Chain modeling from Value Based Management.

Advertising and marketing analysis

Finding out about competitors' advertising and marketing is a big part of analysis that may be included with competitive intelligence software. It includes deep analysis tools to see the effects of recent advertising strategies as well as an overall view of a competitor's marketing strategy.

I recommend: Check out the VMS website to get an overview and understand the capabilities of its advertising analysis software. Entrepreneur Magazine provides a list of tasks to complete to analyze competitors' marketing efforts.