Top 7 CI: Competitive Intelligence Software (Jul 2022)

A Buyer's Guide to CI: Competitive Intelligence Solutions

Competitive Intelligence Software Buyer’s Guide
 
Competitive Intelligence (CI) is not a buzz word. This is different from Business Intelligence, marketing intelligence, and still a little bit far from competitive analysis. In a broader sense, we can say that Competitive Intelligence is a mix of those three but we cannot also conclude that it is more advanced or more powerful. When you conduct in-depth gathering of information from the customers, competitors, distributors, technologies, and various economies and you convert that information into reports that can help you in your business decision-making process, you are attempting to become intelligently competitive. That is what Competitive Intelligence is all about.
 
What makes competitive intelligence activities easy-to-conduct is because of the Competitive Intelligence software solution. In this Buyer’s Guide, we from ITQlick.com will help you understand CI better. We believe that the best way you can acquire a CI software solution for your business these days is by learning the fundamentals up to the complex aspects of this modern technology. If you are aiming to improve you customer engagement, sales strategies, marketing performance, and business competitive advantage as a whole, then we highly recommend that you better read this buyer’s guide from start to end.
 
Types
Because of the extensive scope of CI, there are different categories that one can create even by simply visiting those sites that are conducting CI product reviews, benchmarking, and industry surveys. In the CI solution business, different providers have different field of expertise and this is the basic reason on why they are offering solutions that are incomparable to solutions offered by others. But in this buyer’s guide, we will focus more on understanding the mostly used or purchased CI solutions in the market today and here they are.
 
CI for Marketing
This solution helps marketers gain better understanding about their market landscape by means of receiving first-hand information about competitor strategies and tactics, web marketing trends, and other marketing events in your industry.
 
CI for Sales
This solution is designed to help sales executives boost your sales revenue. By receiving fresh and reliable information about top performers in your industry, strengths and weaknesses reports about competitors, and new sales metrics, winning customers can be your ultimate benefit from this solution.
 
CI for Product management
This solution is for product management executives who want to stay ahead of the competition. By bringing to you the most updated information about your competitors pricing, product roadmaps, and inside news on the newest product that they are about to launch, this solution will enable you to release a more unique and marketable product ahead of them.
 
CI for Executive
This solution offers business executives accurate and timely information about the latest events in the industry and marketplace, new competitive entrants, news about funding and financials, and corporate strategies of competitors.
 
Features
CI software solution is really intelligent. It contains features that sum up the many features of different business management solutions. The intelligent features of a CI solution, regardless of its type, are as follows:
 

• It has the dashboard, email and reporting functions as basic features.
• It maintains a central storage place for information that are gathered and analyzed.
• It creates insightful intelligence newsletter and notifications.
• It instantly generates intelligence reports.
• It performs product and competitor benchmarking.
• It employs text mining and visualization methods in discovering intelligent data.
• It provides alerts on specific updates base on the user settings.
• It provides real time data exactly when you need it.
• It is capable of integrating your marketing and customer relationship management platforms.
• It reveals your competitors information right into your screen.

 
You are probably thinking on how these activities are happening inside a single CI solution. There are actually two machineries that make this happen. First are the built-in intelligent tools and second is the virtual team that is working 24/7 behind the solution. How those information are being collected are because of these:
 

• Social Media Data Mining
• Social Media Content Publishing
• Competitive Pricing Research
• Financial Data Collection
• New Market Researching
• Monthly Reports Gathering
• Marketing Programs and Strategies

 
Solutions per Business Size, per Vendor
The are two most prevalent deployment models for CI solutions in the market today and they are the web-based and on-premise. When it comes to the types of application, the most in-demand solution is the Enterprise Suite. However, you can also find a lot of solutions today that are only focused on a specific area of business (or industry in general) which can either be sales, marketing, business execution or product management.
 
Since our objective here is to guide you the best we can in finding the right CI software solution for you business, we want you to examine these lists of enterprise suite and industry-specific solution providers and see if one of these can become your solution provider.
 
Who are the Enterprise Suite CI solutions providers?
 

• Cipher Solutions
• ACIS
• Astragy
• Comintell
• Acuity
• AdClarity
• Digimind
• CI Radar
• ClearCI

 
Who are the providers of industry-specific solutions?
 

• HootSuite
• Locowise
• PriceGrid
• Rivalfox
• Datanyze
• SproutSocial
• InsideView
• Webreep
• BuiltWithPro
• Crowdbase

 
Pricing Considerations
CI solutions are generally priced based on features that go with the package. Most vendors, whether they are offering enterprise suite or industry-specific solutions, commonly have at least three solution packages on their table. They are often labelled as Basic, Advanced and Professional packages. Let us give you an overview on the pricing range for each of them.
 
Basic Package
This package is consisting of track competitors, measure campaigns, custom reporting, and phone and email support. Priced on a subscription basis, such package is offered from $40 to $400 per month.
 
Advance Package
Advanced package offers unlimited alert notifications, 2 - unlimited number of users, and smart reporting modules. The price typically ranges from $100 to $1000 per month.
 
Professional Package
Offering more advanced and more sophisticated features such as extensive real-time analytics, webpage monitoring for up to 150, and training sessions for client, professional packages are priced from $300 to $2000 per month.
 
In all these packages, basic features such as monitoring modules for social media and traffic, and free trial from 14 up to 30 days are usually included.
 
While subscription-based packages are simpler and preferably cost-efficient, the proper selection of any solution should still be every buyer’s number one concern. That is, from sourcing to full deployment of the solution, a buyer like you must verify that the features needed by your organization are all available in the CI solution that you are about to choose.
 
Market Trends
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CI solution is giving many solution providers great revenue over the last two years. The subscription-based pricing model which we presented above is a clear manifestation that many solution providers today are choosing to develop web-based platforms. We will see more great and intelligent features in SaaS CI solutions in the next two to three years.
 
Social media is doing its big role in the CI industry. While social media monitoring empowers most CI solutions, many software experts are seeing social media to become another powerful CI platform in the coming days.
 
Not only software solutions, but also CI professionals will be needed by many companies over the coming years. This is a clear indication that the CI industry is set to become a bigger community of software experts in the coming years.
 
The CI solution market is ripe in terms of benefits that it is providing to many companies across the globe today. If you haven’t invested yet on a CI software solution, then don’t put your organization behind the competition. Step ahead of your competitors, gain large market share. It’s about time to buy the right CI software solution for your business.
Finding the right CI: Competitive Intelligence software for your business
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