In-house vs third-party competitor research

Despite our obvious bias, we know that you don’t always need an external competitive intelligence agency. Your own colleagues can conduct competent, actionable competitor research.

Your teams are often on the front-line, at the interface between your business and external stakeholders. They have access to a drip-feed of rumours, news, speculation, first-hand accounts and stories that will never make the press.

Competitor research is a constant process

Competitor research can’t be a one-off process, because your competitors are always changing. One rival weakens. Another surges ahead. New entrants shake up the status quo. Companies merge. Markets shift. Change is constant, and so is competitor research.  

This is another reason why it’s important to have in-house resources who can own this function and be responsible for collating, interpreting, reporting and disseminating competitor research.

Your in-house teams can do things that competitive intelligence agencies can’t, like ask salespeople what they hear in the field. Of course, it’s rarely easy to get the time and attention of busy salespeople, but when you get the opportunity, their perspective is usually illuminating.

When do you need a competitive intelligence agency?

Your teams don’t always have the time to conduct a significant research project, such as a complete analysis of the field. At other times, you may identify blind spots that your colleagues can’t work around. For example, a new or little-known competitor may emerge that offers little in the way of online research or offline chatter.

You might assign the bulk of secondary research to your in-house teams, and preserve your budget for the thornier primary research. But even this may prove too difficult if your colleagues are kept busy preparing reports, recommendations and presentations for internal use.

Competitive intelligence agencies are optimised to deliver both broad market appraisals, as well as in-depth analysis of hard-to-reach rivals. This is thanks to their on-demand resources, which can be scaled up to meet your short-term needs, and also their expertise, persistence and knowledge of specialist research tools.

Disseminating intelligence

Whether you conduct your own competitive intelligence research, or engage an agency like Aqute, you will also need internal representatives who can manage the outputs, process data and provide information to colleagues when it’s required.

A key part of managing intelligence is presenting information in useful ways. Some colleagues may just need raw data, others will want summaries, presentations or battlecards.

In-house and external intelligence agencies

For many of our clients, competitive intelligence is a wide-ranging function with many stakeholders, inputs and outputs.

We often act as a flexible resource that can assist with broad data-gathering activities and prevision-targeted missions to uncover insights hidden from general view. 

Find out how Aqute can support your in-house intelligence activity.