Competitive Intelligence

Purpose & Use

Competitive intelligence (CI) is an ethical way to gather information, analyze the retrieved information and to apply intelligence to formulate a report that can provide backing to business, R&D and IP teams of an organization in carrying out informed decisions. The patent portfolio of a company can often be correlated to the technology advancements the company is making internally and therefore is considered one of the valid and important parameters to understand one’s competition.

Competitive intelligence in business comprises of legitimate and effective assimilation of relevant information from diverse published and unpublished resources. For a business to establish their current standing within a market, a competitive intelligence landscape would make a vital aspect of any successful business strategy. Thus, providing essential verdicts a business should implement so as to earn an edge over its competitors. Its importance also lies in understanding the opportunities and challenges presented to a business within its competitive atmosphere.

However, Competitive intelligence analysis is not to be mistaken with corporate or industrial espionage, which encompasses illegal and unethical actions to gain an unfair competitive advantage such as hacking or insider trading to illicit obtain confidential information.

Process & Reporting

The process can include searching for a business’s competitors and/or technology of interest in patent and non-patent databases. Competitive intelligence reports from Signicent, serves the purpose of giving a very good idea about the external business technology environment. In addition to technology CI reports, we can also club it with market CI reports making the analysis even more meaningful and comprehensive. This includes qualitative and quantitative market analysis. The information is gathered from both primary & secondary sources. These include, but not limited to:

  • – Patent & Non-patent databases
  • – Market research databases
  • – Competitor websites
  • – Online publications, News media, Blogs and Articles. Annual/ Budget/Investor/ Stakeholder reports
  • – Social media platforms
  • – Discussion Threads
  • – Trade shows and Conferences
  • – Primary research: Surveys, Industry experts, Focus groups, Customer and competitor interviews, etc.

A typical CI study includes information and analysis from all the aforementioned sources. However, this is merely a starting point. A detailed CI report also encompasses investigating the full breadth of a company’s stakeholders, key distributors, and suppliers, as well as customers and competitors. All the raw data obtained from these resources is analyzed in-depth by our researchers and narrowed down to the most relevant information only. The analyzed info is eventually presented in a categorized and visual manner. The reporting format is entirely customizable as per the user’s requirements.

Overall, Signicent possesses Technology, IP & Market research expertise, navigate to our home page for more details.