Competitive Intelligence is like Investigative Journalism. Maia’s team of consultants go wide and deep into a variety of disparate sources and piece together the information into a cohesive, fact-based narrative. Maia’s Competitive Intelligence takes the guesswork out of competitors’ next moves to uncover their strategies, tactics, strengths, and weaknesses. We use a rigorous approach to conduct Competitive Intelligence engagements. First, Maia exploits all publicly available sources on the competitive issues under investigation. Then, with this foundation of knowledge, Maia conducts primary research on the competitor and interviews knowledgeable stakeholders, subject matter experts, and key opinion leaders to mine firsthand insight. Based on our findings, Maia supports clients by developing strategies that improve market position, minimize competitive threats, and exploit competitor weaknesses.
Our Competitor Intelligence engagements include:
- Go-to-Market Strategies: Competitor assessments of market opportunities, existing products / solutions and identification of top selling offerings, sales strategies and tactics, customer segmentation strategies and priority customer targets, value proposition and competitive differentiators, and monetization strategy (including pricing / pricing models, discounts, and incentives)
- Best Practices & Benchmarking: We assess competitor best practices and provide “apples to apples” benchmarking analysis to ensure Maia’s client’s improve upon potential weaknesses, leverage strengths and stay ahead of the competition.
- Sales Force: Organization (by product line, geography, etc.) and reporting structure, staffing allocation, roles and responsibilities, integration with marketing and other supporting resources, and compensation and incentives
- Product Pipeline: Uncover products currently in development, planned launch strategies and geographic roll-out, current R&D priorities, and intellectual property
- Financials: Competitor revenue and profit margins (overall and by product or division), marketing spend and allocation by channel / activity, and R&D-related expenditures
- Manufacturing & Supply Chain Operations: Suppliers and partners including co-packers and component manufacturers, production and assembly facility location and capacity, manufacturing costs, distribution operations, and planned expansion / restructuring
- IT Operations: Existing infrastructure and planned investments, key enterprise systems and software solutions, IT staffing levels and allocation strategy (near short / offshore / onshore
- Customer Service: Service model and staffing allocation (on-site, remote), generalist / specialist knowledge base, service metrics and key performance indicators
Click here to learn more about our competitor monitoring service, Competitor Barometer.
