OBSERVATION:

Do me a favor - count the number of all your colleagues doing operational work. Then count your colleagues doing management work. And now count the colleagues whose primary focus is to observe and analyse your competition - solely.

If you have counted more than 0 colleagues for competition observation you are an exception.
That is almost no company has established a competition management which is responsible to
- Observe & analyse the competition
- Make findings available and manage them
- Support interpretation and usage of findings

The majority of companies leaves it to individual people to gain insight on the competition - usually besides their “normal” work. Hence this kind of analysis is dependent on the commitment and capacity of individuals.

Quite a risky approach for such relevant information!

INTERPRETATION

From a professional perspective there are numerous downsides to a non-organized competition management:
Observe & analyse
- The observation is focused on an single person’s problem / challenge / question. That is the information is likely not relevant for other departments / products.
Make findings available and manage them
- Once findings were derived they are only communicated and made available to a small set of the organisation. So it is likely that efforts are duplicated to do the same research in different departments / for different products.
- The findings are not presented in a professional manner. Their documentation is tailored to meet a single purpose. This again limits reusability and understandability by other departments (e.g. processes are available either in text form, or as powerpoint drawing or as EPC or as BPMN etc.)
Support interpretation and usage of findings
- Especially for quantitative analysis the quality of interpretation is dependant on the knowledge of relevant methods and tools. This knowledge however is only mastered in few cases by non specialized employees in the organisation.
- Furthermore companies are giving away the potential to have a proactive trigger for new trends and competitive products

RECOMMENDATION

Hence my recommendation is to establish a dedicated competition management team / department. On high level it will have the tasks to
Observe & analyse
- Define main competitors & products
- Define generic key scenarios and figures relevant for analysis
(e.g. customer buying process)
- Analyze and document key scenarios & figures
- Observe competition, products and trends on an ongoing basis
Make findings available and manage them
- Communicate new relevant findings regularly & trigger new developments to relevant departments
- Make findings available centrally
Support interpretation and usage of findings
- Support business departments to derive the right conclusions from the findings

Once established you will
- Get a perfect basis for benchmarking (processes; KPIs)
- Get early triggers for new trends and competitors
- Free potential of your “normal” employees

My final recommendation is to integrate the competition analysis into your established program management / portfolio management process. By this
- You are forced to get a true picture of your competition before you invest your money
- It will become easier to prioritize the competition analysis capacity - it will be oriented at the project prioritization

Action

If you are wondering if competition management is possible for your company or if you are looking for advice on how to realize competition management feel free to get in touch with me.
businessasusual@georg-ley.de

You are also welcome to share your opinion and insights on this topic. Just hit the bubble below and leave a comment.