Everybody wants to be James Bond, but luckily you don’t have to be a master of international espionage to get ahead in business. Unfortunately, although safe-cracking and midnight burglaries might come in handy when stealing a march on your competitors, companies still have to operate within the law.

In the past, businesses had limited means by which they could gain insight into rivals’ strategies - fake shopping visits to competitors and scouring back-issues of newspapers was the order of the day. Today, however, the ever-increasing range of media and communications channels has led to an explosion in the amounts of information available on all businesses. Now, a smorgasbord of online tools allows any business owner to monitor the activities and strategies of the competing pack.

But what are the core steps and principles to consider with your monitoring efforts?

Here are five steps you can take to build an intimate overview of your business rivals. Using these classified tips, you might end up knowing your competitor’s organisation better than they know it themselves...

Step 1 - Keep updated with financials 

With the rise of up-to-the-minute news, businesses can monitor financial information coming from competitors almost in real time. The challenge, however, is to make sense of the huge amounts of data that can be generated. This means focusing on the information that is key to your own business, and its relationship with your rival.

For example, if a competitor’s sales are down but their profits are up, does that mean they are increasing prices? If so, how might that be important for your business? You need to be clear why you are monitoring specific financial figures, so the information generated feeds back into your wider business strategy, rather than swamping your efforts to build a detailed picture of the opposition.

Step 2 - Check up on people's moves

Again, this is becoming par for the course when scouting for sector-specific
updates. Who's joining your competitors, and who is moving on? What are the reasons behind each appointment? If a particular company makes three sales hires in a short space of time, are they ramping up this part of the business or are they just replacing disaffected employees? The dry announcements in the appointments section will only tell you so much; news of people moves needs to be amalgamated with other sources of information (including social media) to divine what’s driving the hires and fires with your competitors.

Step 3 - Look at the big picture 

This shows the importance of having global media coverage at your fingertips.
Are events occurring in the wider economy which could impact on your rivals' bottom line? Peaks and troughs in economic outlook, or events in the political climate, can be indicative of your competitors' prospects. Witness the stagnation in house prices prior to the coming election: for businesses operating in or dealing with the property industry, this is vital information. Taking the temperature of public sentiment and reading into relative optimism or pessimism can be vital to predicting future performance.

Step 4 - What type of coverage are your competitors getting?

This may sound obvious, but different types of coverage can indicate their
own trends and patterns. Is your competitor being mentioned predominantly in trade press? This could indicate industry-specific innovations that they are keen to publicise. Or is their coverage coming from local press in a particular area of the country? This would imply that they are ramping up operations in one geographic location. Look beyond merely story volume, and take advantage of modern tools’ ability to give you insight based on the ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘what’ of the coverage they generate.

Step 5 - Take advantage of the latest tech

Media monitoring has changed beyond all recognition in the last five years.
Increasingly, market intelligence firms are developing innovative technologies that allow businesses to scour the web in entirely new ways. One such tactic is sentiment analysis, which enables users to judge the overall tone of weeks' or months' worth of news coverage, determining general positive or negative trends by analysing millions of words and sentences. This kind of insight is invaluable: keeping on top of the latest developments within the media monitoring industry, and adopting these new techniques, could give your business a crucial head-start on your rivals, and make sure you win in the long-term. After all, James Bond always had Q, so why should you be any different?

 

By David Benigson, CEO of Signal. 

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