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Competitive intelligence (CI) surfaces insights that can - and should - be leveraged across the business. Competitive intelligence can be translated into tactical activities as well as strategic decisions by every department and every employee. Let’s walk through the key areas across the business where competitive intelligence actions can be most impactful and provide a framework for assessing your organization’s ability to take advantage of these opportunities.

Bootstrapping a hacky solution to a complicated competitive intelligence (CI) problem is enticing. But, as a company grows, free software trials and bootstrap fixes wear thin. Your limited investments in appropriate tools can become embarrassing.

One cannot expect reliable growth if nothing is invested. A $0.00 budget for a competitive intelligence program is not enough to see real value from your CI program. You may consider hiring a full-time CI professional to address the challenge. According to PayScale, a competitive intelligence analyst can earn upwards of $100,000 / year. Companies will bleed that salary if they leave employees equipped with lesser tools. Exactly what sort of tools, you ask?

Here are six hacky tools limiting your competitive intelligence program’s growth. Each comes with costs and consequences you might not be able to endure.

After the digital explosion of the last 20 years, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the staggering amount of competitive data available today. In many ways – and for many organizations – it can be easier to plant-head-firmly-in-ground than confront the problem of information overload. It’s also all too easy to index too far on the other end of the spectrum, deciding that you must process every data point to ensure that you don’t miss something important.

Finding a happy medium is key, whether you’re using a competitive intelligence (CI)  platform like Crayon or not. And one vital skill is learning to identify the less obvious signals that could have the most impact on your organization and building process around them.

Innovative companies have learned that the secret to maintaining a competitive advantage is not to compete head-to-head. Instead, it is to resolve to set themselves apart from the competition.

This is precisely how top companies operate. Instead of following in the path of existing competitors, they redefine their industry and distinguish their brand from their competition. They started with a key understanding of their competitors and their market, and used that to stake a unique course to dominate the industry. Below, we look at three companies that have maintained a sustainable competitive advantage by re-imagining what was possible and having the courage to carry it out way ahead of their competitors.