Being in the lead is much harder yet more important nowadays in a fast-paced and ever-changing environment. This is only possible when one has a dedicated and comprehensive competitor analysis framework and access to all competitive information at the point of need.

A competitor analysis framework is a strategic tool that empowers corporations to systematically study and understand the strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and market position of competitors and benchmark them against their own for an effective strategy. Valuable insights are drawn for informed decision-making and uncovering hitherto hidden opportunities and potential threats.

Whether looking to sharpen your market strategy, innovate more effectively, or enhance your competitive advantage, mastering competitor analysis is the route to sustained success and growth. In the following article, we’ll explore how to build a solid competitor analysis framework using AlphaPro’s platform and share best practices to keep your business ahead of the curve.

What is a Competitor Analysis Framework?

This is a structured approach undertaken by companies to study, analyze, and understand their competitors in business; it is, therefore, one way of gathering and analyzing data based on the competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, strategies, products, position in the market, and overall performance.

The use of a competitor analysis framework can provide insights that may help an organization enhance its competitive advantage and strategic decision-making capabilities. Furthermore, the structured approach is a repeatable framework that can be automated to create a competitor strategy without wasting time and avoiding missing critical insights.

Different Types of Competitor Analysis Frameworks

Different Types of Competitor Analysis Frameworks

There are a few large, established competitor analysis frameworks, all suited to different purposes and use cases. The best way to develop your competitor analysis framework is to take what elements from classic frameworks best fit your business needs and then combine those elements into a new, unique framework.

Established competitor analysis frameworks include:

• SWOT Analysis: An analysis of your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It enlightens you about the general strategic position of a competitor and potential areas to grow or risk.

• PEST Analysis: This is an abbreviation for political, economic, social, and technological analysis. It gives a broader context for the external factors that influence your competitive landscape.

• Porter’s Five Forces Analysis: This is a study of five major forces that influence any market’s competitive intensity and attractiveness. It helps businesses understand the forces behind the competition in their specific industry.

• Competitor profiling is the documentation of the strategies, resources, capabilities, and market behaviors of major competitors. It provides an excellent understanding of specific competitors and also assists in the strategic planning process.

• Perceptual Mapping: A graphic representation of how consumers perceive the competitors based on various attributes or dimensions; it helps identify market gaps and the opportunity for differentiation.

Important Elements of a Framework for Competitor Analysis

Some essential components of a thorough framework for competition analysis include the following:

• Identification of competitors: Developing a list of indirect and direct competitors
  • A direct competitor is a company that provides similar products or services to your business’s target consumer group.
  • An indirect competitor is a company that gives an alternative solution to your product but reaches the same audience.

• Data collection is the process of gathering the data needed to achieve a complete picture of his competitors’ strategies, positioning, strengths, and weaknesses.

• Analysis and Interpretation: Using one of the frameworks outlined above to analyze competitors’ strategies and their positioning in the market.

• Reporting and Visualization: Using tools for visualizing and conceptualizing the competitive landscape, such as dashboards or perceptual maps.

• Market Trend Analysis: Analyzing how trends shape your competition landscape and competitor moves.

How to Use a Framework for Competitor Analysis

Identify Competitors

First, compile a list of direct and indirect competitors as you build your competitive landscape. AlphaPro would be an ideal tool for that, as you can look up specific terms most relevant to your business and then see what companies are associated with those terms based on what appears in the search results.

For example, if your company sells electric vehicles, you may look for your direct and indirect competitors by simply typing “EV” or electric cars into our search bar. AlphaPro will then populate the left pane with all relevant documents and the right pane with all the companies in search results that pertain to your search.

Gather Data

This also means allowing you access to the right content to access each of your competitors, providing you with differentiated insights that could place you ahead of them.

In that regard, it is an important competitor research tool because we are a one-stop for all the content you need to achieve a 360-degree view of your competitors and market. Breaking down our content into four key perspectives, journalist, analyst, and expert-we can dive into each of these, including our content library:

• Company: All company documents, such as earnings transcripts, press releases, financial statements, company presentations, and ESG reports.
• Journalist: News, leading dailies, trade magazines, and governmental regulatory institutions
• Analyst: Broker research from more than 1,500 top Wall Street firms in our proprietary Wall Street Insights content offering
• Expert: Hundreds of thousands of expert call transcripts with former employees, partners, customers, and competitors of any organization you are interested

Our automation features and artificial intelligence (AI) search technology also speed up and improve your research, providing you with a competitive edge. We go into further detail about these attributes below:

Semantic Search

With our AI-powered search technology, you no longer have to CTRL-F through fragmented research documents and reports. Our AI will automatically recognize what you look for and instantly throw up results directly related to your intent, filtering out all that noise. This means you can shave hours off your time in research, and you will be more certain of accuracy and completeness.

Our patented smart search features AI-driven search feature, Smart, Synonyms™-identifies phrases and keywords that are meaningfully related to your search query to provide you with relevant and valuable data so you never miss critical insights.

Sentiment Analysis

Our sentiment analysis and NLP technology report on the feeling of markets about any given company, industry, or topic. Our color-coded sentiment – both positive and negative – makes it easy to recognize as you browse your documents and search results on the platform. These AI features work within seconds, saving you hours previously spent combing through dozens of earnings reports.

This may help the company position itself better with earnings research, as sentiment analysis finds subtle shifts within the messaging of the competitive company on key topics and themes.

Generative AI

Unlike other consumer-grade generative AI tools trained on data in the open domain, AlphaPro is an entirely different animal. Its industry-leading suite of generative AI tools was purpose-built to deliver business-grade insights and leans on more than ten years of AI tech development.

Our Smart Summaries tool automatically derives quick earnings insights, reducing the time devoted to research during earnings season. It also helps quickly capture the company outlook and generates an expert-approved SWOT analysis straight from former competitors, partners, and employees.

Conduct a SWOT Analysis

This step involves identifying and analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for areas of your business or your competitors. It enables you to develop a fact-based analysis that gives heightened clarity not only in your current position in the market compared with your competitors but also in which future strategic investments have the potential to help you take the lead.

Some things to think about when doing a competitive SWOT analysis are as follows:

• Acknowledgment Of Brands
• Finance And Cash Flow
• Financial Performance (Including, If Available, Earnings Disclosure)
• Innovation In Technology (Or Lack Thereof)
• Market Share Acquisition
• Employee Satisfaction And Retention
• Partnerships And Strategic Investments, Including M&A Activity
• Modifications To Relevant Regulations
• Competitive Environment

You can use our Notebook template to quickly and easily build up a SWOT analysis for your company and your competitors using AlphaPro. Additionally, all the data you need to complete your study can be obtained on time using varied content sets, such as company documents, news, broker research, and expert transcripts.

Create Battlecards

Then, build battle cards on your competitors. A battle card is a simple cornerstone element in any competitive analysis framework that gives the sales teams some background information to think through competitive issues. A good battle card compares products and services, zeroes in on the key competitive advantages, and presents the value proposition that can position one’s business’s product well above competitive offerings.

With all the right competitor information, organized in useful and consumable formats and updated regularly, companies can arm their sales teams to outcompete rivals and win more deals.

Furthermore, besides better sales results, this helps reinforce the company’s competitive positioning in the market.

The kinds of data required on a battle card will vary based on the needs of the seller but commonly include:

• An outline of the goods and services offered by rivals
• Details about prices
• Side-by-side feature comparisons
• A competitor’s relative strengths and weaknesses
• What sets rival businesses apart from yours
• Why clients have picked your business above rivals (quotes, if you have them!)

Using AlphaPro, you can quickly and simply construct battle cards while researching using our Notebook template. You can also cooperate with your squad and share the battle cards with them using Notebook. 

Market Trends Analysis

The final step is the market trend analysis. A market trends analysis lets you gauge the emerging trends in any given market or industry and competitive signals and priorities. Studying this research and tracking will allow you to identify new opportunities, make more informed and, therefore, more proactive business decisions, and stay ahead of the curve.

This can involve monitoring anything from tracking consumer trends and spending time watching for emerging technology or investment areas to keeping an eye on new regulations, bills, and budget decisions.

Whichever market you’re reviewing, the information contained in this analysis will likely include some of the following:

• A description of the market that includes the parameters (components, borders, TAM, etc.)
• New developments in technology, alterations in consumer behavior, and modifications to laws and regulations
• Market growth and decrease areas
• A synopsis of the competitive environment
• Economic aspects (such as supplier chains, macroeconomic variables, etc.)
• Prognostication and estimation
• Suggested courses of action for the company to take

You can get all of this information in AlphaPro through our vast universe of content and the generative AI features that we offer. Smart Summaries, as well as our Trending Topics tool, give you at-a-glance insights and summaries of the key trends within any market. These are fundamental tools that can help set the direction for analyzing competitors in many ways.

We also give you a full suite of monitoring, analysis, and collaboration tools to track the market in real-time and share critical insights with team members. In addition to search and summarization, these tools comprise:

• Customized Dashboards: All key companies and themes are placed under one roof with integrated information, and you can also receive real-time alerts tailored to your areas of interest.
• Some more powerful collaboration tools include Notebook+, commenting, and more robust tools for managing and sharing insights.
• The Table Tools help push your work faster with spreadsheet-style visualizations directly from company filings so that one may chain together, edit, and optimize tables for analysis.
• Image Search lets you uncover insights hidden in charts, allowing you to access data without having to read pages of documents.
• Snippet Explorer lets you examine any topic or theme and all its historical mentions from one view only.
• Our Black-lining feature automatically identifies for you the QoQ changes within SEC filings.
• Automated Monitoring allows you to set up real-time alerts that send instant updates on relevant market movements, news, emerging trends, and competitor activities. We also generate snapshots of companies and topics regularly, so you’re always one step ahead with actionable insights.