The Challenge
A multinational gas and power company was looking for a comprehensive competitive intelligence program that would showcase all CI data on a single platform. They also wanted to receive regular updates on key indicators and trackers of their competitors’ performance in the market.
Within the past decade, the client had seen multiple disruptors enter one of their most profitable lines of business. This development illustrated the value add and importance of a quality competitive intelligence program to the client.
In the past, when the gas and power company’s employees wanted competitive intelligence information, they reached out to specific team members who had access to it. Providing competitive intelligence knowledge took up the time of those team members, which could have been spent on more strategic projects. The client realized that outsourcing their CI needs with a self-service platform could solve this issue.
Our Solution
Our team customized Insightsfirst to fit the client’s needs and wants for a competitive intelligence program. The solution provided a single, centralized self-service portal for insights and ensured their quality and consistency by filtering out unnecessary noise.
The platform kept employees informed of competitive intelligence developments by sending out daily newsletters. Our analysts summarized the key pieces of CI within the newsletters for an easily digestible and informative read.
The portal featured a dashboard that displayed competitors’ job postings, helping the client identify potential disruptors before actual market movement.
An “Ask the Analyst” button within the platform allowed users to request custom-made pieces of competitive intelligence research that were not already on the portal. Our analysts conducted the additional research, which allowed the client’s team to focus on higher-level tasks.
Business Impact
The dashboard displaying competitors’ job postings helped the client discover that a company was looking to enter a new line of business within the broader gas and power industry before that information was publicly available. This knowledge gave the client a head start on solidifying and fortifying its corresponding line of business, protecting its performance from this new threat.
By eliminating the middleman, our self-service Insightsfirst portal freed up the client’s internal CI team to work on advanced projects and use the information we provided to develop their high-level strategy.
Before the client started using our customized solution, many of their employees had no knowledge of the competitive intelligence that the organization had already collected. If they did possess knowledge of CI, it was either tribal knowledge, which was not as official or standardized as leadership would have liked, or they were well-informed but taking up the internal CI team’s valuable time. The client’s customized Insightsfirst solution solved those issues by spreading standardized competitive intelligence throughout the organization. The daily newsletters were particularly helpful in keeping employees up-to-date.
One of the client’s employees said, “The daily newsletter I get from Insightsfirst comes into my inbox at 9:30 a.m. every morning, and it’s actually one of the few things I will always read. Very relevant and timely news on our competitors.”
Streamlined the CI process
The self-service platform has eliminated the need for employees to reach out to specific team members for CI.
Identified threats and opportunities
The improved CI function has given the client a better look at its competitors and emerging threats.
Disseminated quality CI insights
The daily newsletter provides high-quality CI insights for users, helping maintain a higher level of CI knowledge within the client’s organization.
