Competitive Intelligence elements to create your key competitive advantage part 2
For any business owner, gaining a competitive advantage is crucial but harder to maintain. Across several industries, the rate of business competition has been increasing, and advanced technologies and innovations are entering at an unprecedented rate. Thus, gaining knowledge about market players in the industry gained new importance. This article is the second part of Competitive Intelligence elements to create your key competitive advantage, and part one is here.
The objective of Competitive Intelligence is to offer business owners a competitive edge in the market. Thus, every team in the company needs complete access to intelligence that will help them improve themselves and adjust according to the latest market trend.
So far, we have looked into three significant elements of competitive intelligence, including sector intelligence, market intelligence, and competitor intelligence. Now, we will focus on the remaining four elements of competitive intelligence.
Innovation intelligence
Every industry is going through disruption due to the integration of new technologies and innovations. Innovation intelligence refers to a process of solving problems by discovering and combining ideas and methods in a novel way.
Companies need innovation intelligence to adjust to rapidly changing markets and gain an advantage to stay competitive and relevant to market trends. Companies that continue to shrink after their initial success often fail to innovate and keep up with the market dynamics.
Incumbent business needs innovative intelligence as it tracks disruptions in the industry, enabling their teams to innovate new services and products. Moreover, innovative intelligence help disruptors understand their pitfall and help them focus on less-demanding customers or unsatisfied customers.
One major challenge that leads to innovation is the overextension of a business. Some incumbents tend to overextend their business beyond their reach, which creates unbalance in customer attention, and innovators identify such customer pain points and offer better solutions.
Disruption and innovation are essential for a competitive environment, and they help new businesses develop their products and find problems in the market that can satisfy with their expertise. Moreover, it helps them address ever-changing customer behaviour.
Sales intelligence
Sales intelligence refers to using software and data to help the sales team focus their efforts on buying ready accounts, creating consumer profiles, generating leads, and better managing their data.
In this fast-paced world, businesses change daily. So sales need appropriate tools to monitor market trends continuously.
More often than not, the sales team is part of one campaign per quarter and is focused on accounts that do not have current needs. However, sales intelligence monitors the market for patterns and triggers that point toward buying ready accounts. Moreover, it offers insights on major accounts for relevant and personalised outreach.
Supply chain intelligence
Supply chain intelligence is a process of collecting and analysing information that is relevant to a company’s supply and vendor contacts. It helps the company to make informed decisions in procurement and category management.
Supply chain intelligence monitors the market constantly to inform about the required production rate and where the market wants the best manufacturer and sale prices. This helps you make profitable business decisions and gives you a competitive advantage.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Intelligence
ESG intelligence refers to understanding the impact of your business practices on the environment, social issues, and government relations.
ESG intelligence tracks environmental footprint, where industry and competitors are headed, and what are their sustainability goals. Moreover, it helps you understand customers’ social welfare and other humanitarian efforts.
ESG intelligence is vital for a business to shift its attitude regarding environmental, social, and government relations. Moreover, customers demand more ESG impact and ask for sustainable practices. Thus, ESG intelligence helps adapt faster than competitors and offers the change customers demand.
Competitive Intelligence elements to create your key competitive advantage part 2
In conclusion, for any business owner, gaining a competitive advantage is crucial. However, it is harder to maintain in a competitive market. Industries with rapidly advancing technologies are especially prone to intense competition. We hope our article titled Competitive Intelligence elements to create your key competitive advantage gives you a taste of what Competitive Intelligence can do. To stay ahead of the competition, businesses need to continually innovate and adapt their strategies.
Art by Jeremy Bezanger
Guest post by Swamini Kulkarni
