Business and market intelligence tools under scrutiny – Part 2
Companies today face the challenge of remaining competitive in a dynamic market environment. In order to obtain external and internal information and use it as a basis for decision-making, different types of intelligence tools play a crucial role. In this update of the MI industry news we take a look at the differences between Business Intelligence and Market & Competitive Intelligence tools, and in addition specifically at MI & CI tools.
Business Intelligence (BI) and Market & Competitive Intelligence (MI & CI) may sound similar, but they are two different approaches to obtaining important information and making decisions within an organization.
- Business intelligence tools focus on analyzing internal company data such as sales and sales figures, financial reports and CRM systems (from data warehouses).
- Market and competitive intelligence tools, on the other hand, use and analyze external data to show the current market landscape. These tools monitor, for example, the market and trends, competitive activity, customer feedback, patents and social media.
Each of the Market & Competitive Intelligence tools that have been developed serves a specific purpose and fulfills a specific customer need. In the last article from 2018, we focused on tools in the area of social media analytics. Today, however, there are also providers that offer a combination of tools and functions from a variety of platform types:
Various platform types
The essential features that characterize an outstanding tool:
- the integration of numerous sources,
- intelligent natural language search (NLP),
- semantic search,
- graphically optimized reporting functions,
- user-friendly dashboards,
- the integration of artificial intelligence (AI).
According to market reports, the market for competitive intelligence tools will grow by around 10 percent annually by 2026. There are over 7,000 reviews of MI/CI tools on the software comparison platform g2. Over 100 of the most popular tools are listed there.
Over the past year, we at SVP have looked closely at various MI & CI providers. An excerpt of the providers and their USPs are, for example:
PROVIDER
USPs
Comintelli
- Intuitive user interface with continuous expansion of AI
- “Self-service” of feeds/taxonomy and analysis tools for users
- For rapidly changing industries with a high need for innovation
Valona
- High number of sources behind a paywall, including social media sources
- Large customer base
- State of the art AI engine with generative capabilities
Klue
- Comprehensive connection and integration into several company tools (CRM etc.)
- Particularly suitable for companies that focus on go-to-market roles, sales tools, battle cards and win-loss analysis (Sales)
- Wide range of service partners to support customers with market and competitive research and analysis
Cikisi
- Simple search query for users
- Access to ready-made industry source library
- Fully customizable reports, alerts and dashboards in corporate design
Amplyfi
- High number of scientific papers based on the predefined sources or the defined industry and the sources available at Amplyfi
- AI focused platform
Although each tool has its strengths and weaknesses in the processing of information and sources (knowledge management), the preparation and presentation of dashboards for monitoring, collaboration within the team, the connection of API interfaces, etc., one topic stands out for all providers: the integration and expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
The functions include, for example:
- Automated summary of individual news items or entire reports,
- Analysis of positive and negative sentiment,
- Query in “natural language”,
- Automated clustering of topics,
- Semantic search: classifies content by checking the topics of the content against the search terms, the quality of the source, topicality and previous user behaviour,
- Transcription of audio and video files.
When examining the various providers, we found that AI functions can certainly support data collection and processing, pattern recognition and summary writing and make work more efficient, but cannot yet replace human analysts, their interpretation skills and strategic thinking.
It remains exciting to track the future development of AI in market and competitive intelligence tools. It is foreseeable that the integration of human analysts and AI technologies will be important for the tools. The synergy between human expertise and advanced AI promises to continue to provide effective and powerful support in information gathering and strategic decision-making for companies.
We at SVP also use Comintelli’s MI/CI tool (Intelligence2Day) to keep our customers up to date in the market environment. You can read more about this in our article “Open Innovation – SVP as part of your innovation network”.
Get in touch with us and we will clarify the extent to which SVP can support you.
Norman Ziegler, Market Intelligence Expert
Sources:
- SVP-Research
- The Forrester Wave: Market And Competitive Intelligence Platforms, Q2 2023
- Studienanbieter wie z.B. Technavio, Fortune Business Insights
- Comintelli Webseite & Insights
- IDC Blog
- g2.com