COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
We find what your competitors don’t want you to know.
We bring the rigour, discipline, and source-handling tradecraft of military intelligence to the business world. We help you understand what’s happening in your market and what your competitors are doing, and then what to do about it.
This is not desk research dressed up as insight. We speak to the right people in the right way and find answers your competitors hope you never ask for.
75% North American clients
UK & Dubai-based, with the majority of our work delivered for clients across North America.
HUMINT – Led
Primary research is at the core of everything we do. Not tools. Not dashboards. Talking to People.
Our services
Every engagement begins with a question you need answered. Here is how we answer them.
Competitive Intelligence
You are making decisions without the full picture. We change that. Using HUMINT-led research, we uncover how your competitors win, where they are heading, and what they are hiding. Bespoke intelligence built around the decision you need to make.
B2B Mystery Shopping
We go inside your competitors’ sales processes. Our B2B mystery shopping is particularly popular with product, marketing, strategy, RevOps, and sales teams in high-growth SaaS platforms. Trusted by the world’s leading pricing consultancies. We find out exactly how your competitors pitch, price, handle objections, and close.
Competitor Counterintelligence threat
The security budget includes firewalls and phishing tests, but no one tests the friendly chat at a trade show stand or the helpful call with a support agent. Each week, competitors gather everything your staff gives away, and we know this because it’s how we gather intelligence for our own clients. We apply these methods to your business so that you will see the gaps before your competitors do.
Market Intelligence & Market Entry
Markets move. Opportunities close. We map the landscape before you commit. Sizing the market, identifying the risks, and finding the entry points others miss. Whether you are expanding into new territory or stress-testing an existing position, we give you the ground truth.
Win-Loss Analysis Interviews
You lost the deal. Your CRM says it was price. The buyer would tell you otherwise if anyone asked them properly. We do. We interview the people who made the decision on the deals you won and the ones you lost, and find out what drove the outcome. Not a reason code picked by a sales rep in a hurry, but the real story from the person who chose. What your competitors said, where your pitch fell short, and what would have changed their mind.
Competitor Analysis, Profiling & Benchmarking
How do your competitors really win business? What do they say when you are not in the room? We find out. Profiling and benchmarking that tell you where the gaps are, where you are vulnerable, and where to hit hard. Whether you are looking to outpace a competitor or evaluate one for acquisition.
Competitive Intelligence for Acquisitions
Financial due diligence shows you the numbers. We show you the reality behind them. Is buying that business the right move? What’s really happening in their market? Will key people stay? Are customers happy? What do competitors know that you don’t?
Go-To-Market Product Management Competitive Intelligence
We find out who the customer is, what they will pay, and what it costs to serve them. Then we can build it. Competitive intelligence, product research, product management, design and build are brought together
Competitor Monitoring
Competitive advantage erodes the moment you stop watching. We track your competitors continuously across products, pricing, partnerships, and strategic moves, with regular briefings and real-time alerts when something significant happens. You see threats early and respond while you still have room to act, rather than reading about the move months after it landed.
SaaS Market Entry
You are entering a new segment, region, or category. The pricing pages, analyst reports and internal conviction that got you this far are available to every other company making the same move. We speak to the people your competitors cannot brief. Churned customers, former sales leads, channel partners, and the buyers who chose someone else. You learn how deals get won in that market before you commit engineering and go-to-market budget. Delivered as an eight-week Evidence and Decision Sprint that ends at a go or no-go gate.
Board Advisory Intelligence
Management reports on company performance. Boards need an independent view of competitive threats, market dynamics, and strategic risk. We deliver regular board briefings on the competitive landscape, regulatory change, and M&A activity, in a format built for board time. So directors provide sharper oversight and ask the questions management would rather they didn’t.
Scenario Analysis
Most strategies bet on a single version of the future. We build several. Using a foresight discipline developed at RAND and Shell and refined ever since, we construct multiple plausible futures for your market, stress-test your strategy against each, and identify the early indicators that tell you which one is arriving. So you commit with confidence under uncertainty, not hope.
Corporate Intelligence & Geopolitics
Operating across borders means navigating risks that do not appear in annual reports. We provide discreet, on-the-ground intelligence on the political situation, regulatory exposure, and competitive threats. So you can move with confidence, not hope. When the stakes are high and the information is hard to find, that is exactly where we work.
Straight-talking. Actionable. Uncompromising.
We are a small, focused team. We do not outsource your project to junior researchers or automated tools. With Octopus, you get experienced former military intelligence professionals doing the work.
Our deliverables are in plain English. No jargon-laden reports, no complicated models built to impress rather than inform.
We tell you what we found, what it means, and what you should do next.
We are sector agnostic. Industry experience can blind you. We come to every project as disciplined enquirers. Asking the questions an insider would never think to ask, and finding the answers they would never think to look for.
How we work.
We have spent over twenty years refining a three-step approach which combines hard work, human thinking, and common sense. It sounds simple. Most things that work do.
1. Discovery
We start with the decision you need to make. Intelligence programmes fail because they start from the wrong place. We work with you to define exactly what you need to know, why it matters, and what you will do with the answer. Then we build the research around that.
2. Insight
We go to the source. That means speaking to industry insiders, former employees, customers, channel partners, competitor sales teams and sector specialists. The people who know how your competitors operate, not just how they present themselves. We map what we find, identify patterns, and build a picture that secondary research and LLMs alone can’t produce.
3. Now what?
Intelligence without action is just information. We present clear options, explain the implications, and help you decide what to do next. The goal is always a decision made with confidence, not a shelf full of data.
Our global footprint.
We are headquartered in the UK with operations in Dubai, serving clients across North America, Europe, and the MENA region. Our Dubai base gives us on-the-ground capability across the Gulf and wider Middle East. A region where local knowledge and trusted contacts are not optional extras but the price of entry.
The majority of our clients are in North America. We understand the markets, the competitive dynamics, and the decision-making cultures.
What our clients say
“Octopus Intelligence has done some brilliant competitor research for us over the years and can get the information you would have thought impossible. First-class service.”
– Global CMO, UK Plc
“You reminded us to be a people business, not just a tech business. Octopus can harvest OSINT and primary information that few market intelligence providers can.”
– CEO, UK/US Tech Firm
“Thank you for all the work in supporting our global competitive intelligence needs. It’s a great partnership that provides value to our businesses and future strategy.”
– Global Product Manager
[More testimonials] [Case studies]
Ready to find out what your competitors don’t want you to know?
We offer a free, no-obligation consultation. No hard sell. A straight conversation about what you need and whether we can help.
Working under the Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows code of ethics.