Customer Corner: How Archer Empowers Sales with Crayon Answers as Their Personal CI Assistant

For most of today’s competitive intelligence teams, AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a game-changer. Whether product marketers are fine-tuning messaging with ChatGPT or instantly synthesizing insights from a competitor’s latest product launch, AI is cutting through the noise and eliminating hours of manual work.

With that in mind, we recently sat down with Vinod Sreedharan, Product Marketing and Strategy, at Archer, an enterprise leader in providing fully integrated risk management solutions, to hear how the company is embracing Crayon’s AI features to better enable sales.

Q: How are you using AI for competitive intelligence at Archer? 

A: At Archer, we're using AI to stay ahead in the competitive intelligence game by making smarter, faster decisions without getting bogged down in information overload. We leverage diverse AI models (Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, etc.) and a home cooked prompt library for continuous competitive intelligence. We constantly monitor the new updates (reasoning models, thinking models) that the Gen AI tools offer, for incremental iterative improvisation of our agile CI methodology. 

We think of it like having a super-smart research assistant that works around the clock—no coffee breaks needed! It digs through tons of data, like articles, announcements, updates, and market trends, to surface and elevate critical information we might otherwise miss. This frees us up to focus on strategy and value instead of sifting through endless reports.

One of the biggest advantages is how AI helps us predict what competitors might do next, not just track what they’ve already done. For example, it can spot patterns and connections that hint at future moves, giving us a head start to plan our own. Plus, generative AI helps us quickly summarize all this information into clear, actionable reports so we can act fast. 

But here’s the key: AI isn’t running the show—it’s supporting us. We use its insights as tools to guide our decisions, combining its analytical power with our human expertise. This collaborative teamwork lets us spot opportunities, avoid risks, and adapt to changes in the market at the right pace. In a world where speed and foresight matter more than ever, AI gives us the edge we need to stay ahead of the competition. 

In short, AI doesn’t replace our judgment—it sharpens it. And that’s how we’re changing the strategy game.

Q: How is your team using Crayon Answers, the Gen AI compete assistant for Sales?

A: At Archer, our biggest challenge was getting the right competitive intelligence and messaging to the right people - fast and actionable.  

So, we implemented 'AskCI' powered by Crayon Answers, and integrated it into Slack, Teams, and Salesforce, where our teams already work. 

When someone at Archer needs competitive intelligence—whether they’re preparing for a sales call, crafting an email, or strategizing against a competitor—they simply ask AskCI a question via their prompt. The tool uses AI to interpret the query, pull relevant insights from our curated battlecards, and deliver tailored responses instantly. We have also added messaging documents and our own thought leadership into the mix. Combining our core messaging with our competitive intelligence work, gives our teams an advantage with crafted positioning statements. They no longer have to sift through documents or switch between platforms—it’s like having a personal CI expert ready to help at a moment’s notice. 

We’re using Crayon Answers via AskCI to make competitive intelligence truly actionable, putting the information where our teams need it most, in their workflow. This means they can tailor their pitches, respond to objections, and win more deals, all thanks to readily available, up-to-date CI served to them based on their contextual prompting.

Q: Can you share some of the results you’ve experienced thus far with Crayon’s AI features? 

A: We launched this internally to our colleagues in January 2025. While it has been a short while since launching AskCI (powered by Crayon’s AI), early observations indicate a significant reduction in time spent on searching and consuming Competitive Intelligence. We're confident that AskCI will see dramatically improved sales effectiveness. And most importantly, our field colleagues love having instant access to CI and answers around positioning, pricing etc. The adoption of AskCI at Archer has been fantastic.  

Ahead, we hope to see this directly impacting Sales cycles, further augment and increase our win rates.

Q: What are some of the ways you envision AI will help product marketing teams in the future?  

A: AI is going to transform product marketing in many ways and in the very near term, we can envision three key pathways:  

• Hyper-personalization of client experiences  

• Proactive prediction of market trends and needs  

• Massive boost in content creation efficiency, optimized for maximum impact

This means more relevant messaging, better products, and ultimately, stronger client relationships – that's the future we're building at Archer. 

With this, AI will move product marketing from reactive to proactive. We envision AI predicting market trends, identifying unmet client needs, and even suggesting entirely new product features before clients even realize they want them.  

In line with that, leveraging the experience from our leadership in Enterprise GRC deployments, Archer aims to infuse AI into every aspect of our GRC solutions, enabling smarter, faster, and more data-driven risk decisions 

At Archer, we confidently state that we are leading GRC into the age of intelligent, holistic value-based AI-Powered Risk Management. And Crayon's AI-powered competitive intelligence, our valued partnership, is a key part of that transformation.

Learn more about Crayon's AI capabilities and grab a demo to see how Crayon can level up your compete program — and help your sales team close more competitive deals.