Measuring the Value of Your Competitive Intelligence Program: Top Metrics to Consider
The definition of a winning edge in the business world nowadays requires more than just savvy marketing campaigns and brilliant services. It’s about understanding your competition and using that knowledge to drive your business forward.
90% of Fortune 500 Companies use competitive intelligence services to get a leg up on their industry competitors – proving that all businesses should work to improve their own CI efforts to develop a winning business strategy.
What is Competitive Intelligence?
If you’re unfamiliar or need a refresher, Competitive Intelligence is gathering, analyzing, and using information about competitors to improve your competitive advantage. But how do we measure how effective it is? Just like any other business process, success comes with quantifiable metrics.
Important competitive intelligence metrics to consider
Measuring market effectiveness
One of the most compelling metrics for evaluating your competitive intelligence is market effectiveness – a tool to measure your business performance against the competition. Within it, one primary measure is the win/loss rate, which is the percentage of opportunities your business successfully won versus those lost to competitors. To calculate it, you can use this formula:
Sales win rate = Closed-won deals / (Closed-won deals + Lost deals)
To complement that is the measure of competitive displacements. Measuring how often your business can replace its competitors in deals can give you a clearer picture of your competitive strength. As well, so is checking the value or number of sales opportunities where competitive intelligence gets used.
Internal Traction
So, you have your metrics from the market, but what’s going on inside your business? Internal traction concerns how the competitive intelligence is being used, embraced, and valued within the organization.
One way to measure this is to observe feedback from your sales teams (as well as other internal teams). Since sales teams have a direct view of how your competitive intelligence is operating in real time, you can check out what they’re saying and whether they’re finding it useful. Their feedback is essentially a reflection of how efficient your competitive intelligence is.
Revenue growth
With 61% of businesses stating that competitive intelligence drives revenue growth, it’s a metric that businesses can’t afford to overlook. It provides insight into the financial viability and growth trajectory of your competitors, giving you an edge in strategic planning.
If, for example, you spot that your competitor’s revenue is consistently growing, it could mean they’ve found a winning formula that they’re using to outperform in the market. But observing revenue growth alone isn’t enough – you also need to understand what influences it.
For example, if your competitor’s recent product launch contributed to their revenue spike, take it as a learning point for your business. Maybe you’ve missed out on a market gap or marketing strategy worth adopting. This metric isn’t just about numbers, but about context too.
The strategic advantage of CI metrics
Competitive intelligence metrics offer a powerful lens and strategies and performances of your competitors, helping decision-making in your business become more informed and proactive. The insights competitive intelligence metrics offer might be a goldmine, but you’ll need to know how to dig for those hidden nuggets.
If you want to simplify the process, find a partner who understands the industry, the metrics, and how to make sense of all the data. Contact Aqute Intelligence and let us help you revamp your business’s approach to competitive intelligence today.
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