Businesses are increasingly focused on data-driven decisions as the competitive landscape only grows within each industry.
Competitive Intelligence brings value for businesses by providing data to drive decisions based on sector, competitor, sales, and a plethora of other business elements.
Understanding how the concept of data-driven decisions has grown can help you find value in competitive intelligence and see how your competitors have begun their own competitive intelligence efforts over the last few years.
We put together some of the most mind-blowing competitive intelligence statistics to demonstrate the importance of implementing CI into your business practices.
1. 90% of Fortune 500 Companies already use Competitive Intelligence to Gain a Competitive Advantage (Source: Emerald.com)
With 90% of Fortune 500 Companies using CI to gain an advantage of their industry competitors, businesses outside of the F500 should be focused on improving their own CI efforts to remain competitive. This might require the implementation of CI tools, platforms, and other solutions, as well as increasing budget toward those CI efforts.
2. More than 73% of enterprises dedicate 20% of their technology budgets to research and data analytics. (Source: Forbes)
Research and Data Analytics are going to continue to grow in importance as the landscape continues to shift toward more and more data-driven decision making at both a departmental and executive level.
3. Using competitive intelligence, 56% of executives keep an eye on their potential competitors and make plans to conquer new markets in the following three years. (Source: PwC)
This stat is particularly important to keep in mind as more and more organizations focus on data to drive their business deals. Using competitive intelligence allows executives to have a better understanding of the landscape they’re facing in the coming years. It provides a view into what their competitors are doing with their products, services, vendors, mergers and acquisitions, and internal teams.
4. Data analytics makes decision-making 5x faster for businesses. (Source: TechJury.net)
Decision-makers in businesses, particularly executives, have been focusing more and more on data analytics to drive their decisions. In the previous stat, 56% of executives kept an eye on what their competitors are doing, and with that, it helps them have an idea of where the market is going.
Decision-makers also need to focus on internal data to improve decision-making. Data analytics helps decision-makers understand what strategies and tactics have been working and which ones have not—cutting out the guessing game of figuring out what stakeholders do and do not want to see. It helps teams understand how their strategies are helping the business and where to focus more efforts.
5. 74% of enterprises say that their main competitors are already using Big Data analytics to successfully differentiate their competitive strengths with clients, the media, and investors. (Source: Forbes)
This stat is particularly important to the case to build up your own competitive intelligence efforts because enterprises are using data analytics to understand the level of competition that their competitors bring. This is a form of CI—enterprises are gathering intel on their competitors to understand how their competitors are using data to differentiate themselves in the market.
Forrester Research Named Evalueserve's Insightsfirst a Strong Performer
The Forrester Wave™: Market & Competitive Intelligence Platforms, Q2 2023
6. 57% of companies state that gaining a competitive advantage is one of the top 3 priorities in their industry (Source: Forbes)
With companies stating they are focused on gaining a competitive advantage, it can be assumed that they will be improving their competitive intelligence efforts to gain that advantage over the next year or so within their industry.
7. 94% of businesses are planning to invest in competitive intelligence. With a large-scale number of companies seeking data-based solutions for their business ventures, the only way to stay afloat is to join in. (Source: Small Biz Trends)
94% of companies planning to invest in competitive intelligence is a huge deal. Without CI, these companies would not be able to scale their businesses and remain competitive in an increasingly competitive market.
8. Companies analyze only about 12% of their entire collected data. That leaves about 88% of the opportunities and threats that go unnoticed. (Source: Leftronic)
Companies are missing out on huge opportunities by not utilizing all their collected data. A Competitive Intelligence solution would help companies avoid letting big opportunities slip through the cracks and better utilize the other 88% of data they are. This statistic helps companies understand the importance of investing in a competitive intelligence solution.
9. 53% of CEO’s said they are concerned about competition from disruptive businesses (Source: Information-Age)
Competitive Intelligence is not just about tracking what competitors are doing, but also tracking disruptors of an industry, understanding the gaps in the market, and how those disruptors are addressing them with new innovations. Innovation and disruption intelligence is a huge part of CI that helps businesses remain competitive and keep up with the demand of customers and the market.
10. 81% of marketers expect to be competing mostly or completely on the basis of customer experience with their competitors in two years. (Source: Gartner)
Customers are changing the market, and they are more informed than ever. That’s why CI is so important to the success of your sales team. Not only do they need to know what pain points potential customers are facing, but they need to be aware of what customers already know and what competitors have to offer. CI platforms can help drive that knowledge-gathering and improve objection handling and meeting preparedness.
11. In 10 years, 40% of today’s Fortune 500 companies will be replaced by firms we haven’t yet heard of because they can’t compete (Source: A study from the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University)
To remain competitive, companies need to act quickly and adapt to the digital age focused on big data and competitive intelligence. This is a compelling statistic stating that 40% of the Fortune 500 companies, or 200 players, will be replaced because they could not adapt to the increased need for competitive intelligence to remain at the top.
12. 62% of companies foresee increasing the CI spend. (Source: SCIP, State of Competitive Intelligence)
This stat is important because competitive intelligence has already become a more prevalent business practice over the last 10 years, with more and more companies attributing budget and resources, it is no surprise that 62% of companies foresee an increase in their CI spending in upcoming years.
This goes to show the importance of CI and how it will benefit companies to improve their current CI or beginning implementing competitive intelligence into their business practices.
13. Only 50% of MI budget is spent on regular deliverables, the remaining 50% is spent to deep dive on emerging topics. (Source: M-Brain)
Not only are markets becoming more competitive, but the value proposition of content is becoming more competitive as well. Prospective customers want upfront value before even considering doing business with companies now. Therefore more businesses are spending money on discovering and deep-diving into the emerging topics ahead of time, to determine what value and content they can provide to prospects seeking information on these topics.
14. 61% of the companies strongly agree that their company has benefited from MI and support a holistic, multi-source, consultative approach increasingly being adopted. (Source: M-Brain)
Companies are recognizing the value of competitive and market intelligence—and that enterprises have already adjusted their strategies to include CiMi in future business plans. Competitive Intelligence can improve your marketing, sales, and product strategies.
15. Market pressures are the leading drivers of digital transformation as most efforts are spurred by growth opportunities (51%) and increased competitive pressure (41%). (Source: Prophet)
Competition is the leading driver of a digital transformation. Using data-driven intelligence can help speed up your digital transformation, improve your standing within your market, find new growth opportunities, and help your business remain competitive with top performers.
16. AI-enabled monitoring and analysts curated news that enables up to 90% superior relevance (Evalueserve Survey, 2021)
AI-enabled monitoring improved knowledge relevancy by 90%, better supporting the needs of CI, Marketing, Sales, and Strategy teams. Those teams are then able to reduce redundancies, improving the quality of information they’re using, and improve their business functions.
17. Using a centralized intelligence platform helps teams located information 4x faster than without a centralized platform (Evalueserve Survey, 2021)
If companies can locate information 4x faster, that leads to less time spent duplication of knowledge-gathering efforts and more time analyzing the information, distributing results, and determining new action plans. Teams are seeing these 4x gains from AI being used to gather, filter, and visualize huge amounts of data which means CI teams can focus on strategic initiatives.
18. Using intelligence platforms to monitor prospects and customers brings in 4x more revenue. (Evalueserve Survey, 2021)
Companies are seeing a 4x increase in revenue from using a CI platform because they are able to track comprehensive sources that impact their market like competitors, markets, and key accounts. Having this information enables their team to create stronger and more compelling positioning in the market, effectively handle competitive objections, and also to track key accounts based on buying signals so the sales team prioritizes better and uses the correct messaging.
19. The average enterprise CI team has 3-5 members that support an average of 500 users. (Evalueserve Survey, 2021)
With a centralized intelligence platform, powered by AI, those 3-5 members are able to gather information faster, distribute information faster, and better support those 500+ users. CI platforms powered by AI, do not just help CI professionals, they can improve business functions and speed up many communication and business processes.
Making use of artificial intelligence in your competitive and market intelligence efforts offers myriad benefits in efficiency and relevancy, as we’ve discussed in this blog.
