shyam sreekumar nair, competitive intelligence

Competitive Intelligence26

intelligence gatheringstart(up)

Shyam Sreekumar Nair, Competitive Intelligence Practitioner

27www.scip.orgVolume 18 • Number 2 • April/June 2015

Shyam Sreekumar Nair, Competitive Intelligence Practitioner

It may be true that most start-ups pull down shutters for reasons of their own making, but it would be imprudent to presume that they operate in a vacuum. Competition is a major existential threat and low-entry barriers make it necessary to monitor competitive threats on a periodic if not daily basis. Traditionally, there are two approaches to competitive data collection (1) inside-out: frame questions your business needs answers to and look for related indicators on competition (b) outside-in: discover what information is available for competition on the internet, identify potential use cases and create a repeatable process for information capture. Most of the entrepreneurs follow neither of the above, only a few follow the “inside-out” method ahead of a pitch to a VC/ angel investor. Very few, if any, invest in the “outside-in” method of competitive data collection.

One can argue – how can start-ups devote scarce budgets and talent to competitor research? Exactly, and that’s where the “outside-in” method is so valuable. One doesn’t realize that most of what they need to make actionable decisions is available at no cost. You just need to invest in a one-time effort to determine where to look for competitive information going forward. After that, it’s a matter of making sure the data is collected and reported periodically.

Based on conversations with some entrepreneurs who actively monitor their competition, here is a framework of four aspects that can be monitored on the internet:

A website, more often than not, is the principal digital storefront for any new business (unless one is operating through a Facebook page which we will come to later). Your competitors will make every effort to point prospects towards their website and would like to ensure that once on the website prospects are able to discover what you would like them to find. Secret shopping on their website can provide a first-hand account of the language used to describe their value proposition, their unique differentiation, and to a certain extent, basic customer expectations in your business.

Therefore, the first step to unlocking information about most of your competitors would be to find their website and set up a way to regularly monitor it.

The first step is to build a list of competitor websites, unless you are already aware of them. The easiest way is to identify sites that get traffic from the same keywords that bring traffic to your website.

Once you find a competitor, you can also use the “Related” search in Google to discover similar companies. Here’s an example for Practo, an Indian search portal matching doctors with patients:

Start(Up) Intelligence Gathering


October 2014 June 2015

In order to monitor your competitor’s website going forward, you can use one of the multiple free website monitoring services available. Let’s look at another example of how one might monitor changes to the BookMyShow portal:

Once you have identified your competitor websites, there are two options. Firstly, you might want to understand what changes they have made to their website over time, and secondly, you may want to be notified any time they make a change to their website going forward. The former can be achieved by using the Internet Archive or Wayback Machine to revisit snapshots of their webpages to discover past promotions/ web page banners and observe how their website design and navigation might have changed over time. Here’s an example for Book-MyShow, an Indian movie and events ticketing portal:

Source: Spyfu (for illustration purposes only) Source: Google (type “related:www.yourURL.com” in Google)

Source: Internet Archive - snapshots of webpages available since 1996 (for illustration purposes only)


• You can see how “Gift Cards” was heavily promoted with a banner image in October

• Events & Plays are now separate tabs, were a combined page in October. This could mean that BMS is getting some traction with “Plays” which justifies having a separate tab.


While the website is a good indicator of activity at most start-ups, there are some that are mobile-app based for which monitoring the website may not be practical or yield good intelligence. Besides, with smartphone ownership surging at meteoric rates (8 in 10 internet users globally own a smartphone per GlobalWebIndex; 1 in 6 of India’s wireless subscribers have a smartphone, per BCG), it makes business sense for start-ups to start a mobile app to engage with prospects. If you are one of those start-ups who have or are planning to start a mobile app, it’s important to know about competing apps.

Source: SensorTower (for illustration purposes only)


Some questions you can get answers to by monitoring subtle changes to your competitor websites are:

• Do they dress their homepage up during certain festivals every year? • How does their positioning and content strategy change – are they planning to pivot in a new direction? • What improvements are they making to landing page designs and site navigation?

Source: Changedetection.com (for illustration purposes only)

The first step is to identify competing apps. That is easier in app stores (like Google Play and App Store) as “similar/ related” apps are catalogued if your app is already part of the store. If not, you can use keywords that you would have used to describe your app to find related apps.

One of the valuable things to read and track on an ongoing basis is the app reviews available in-store. They can provide a first-hand view of customer experience and satisfaction or lack thereof. Services like SensorTower allow you to analyze the recent reviews. Here’s an example for Ola Cabs, an Indian cab aggregator service.


Source: SimilarWeb - the portal also provides a list of top in-store and search engine keywords for each app (for illustration purposes only)


Another valuable detail is the version history, which is the competitor’s own public record of enhancements and upgrades to the app. If you want to find how competitor apps fare on various benchmarks, you might want to try app store optimization sites like AppTweak. Below is a sample report for the PepperFry Android app, an Indian online furniture retailer.

Understanding the traffic sources for a competing app can be very useful in fine-tuning one’s own marketing strategy. There are many service providers like SimilarWeb that help in tracking such information. Here’s an example for the HolidayIQ Android app, an Indian travel and holiday information business. A quick look reveals that referrals are a key driver of success for such apps, while digital display ads account for less than 10% of the traffic.

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By keeping a tab on competing apps, start-ups can help draw meaningful conclusions on their engagement strategy and get a flavor of their customer experience and more importantly potential gaps and weaknesses that can be capitalized upon. To get more of the latter, one can also tap into the multitude of social media listening tools (both free and paid).

Most start-ups have a dedicated Facebook page for their business. Some, like I mentioned before, may only have a Facebook page and no website (a common occurrence in India). While reading individual posts on a competitors’ Facebook page can provide a measure of customer appreciation or criticism, using social media listening tools enables one to gather more useful insights on the performance of competitors’ owned social media pages. The most common metrics measure posting frequency, engagement, and estimated reach. Here is an example for Lenskart, an Indian online eyewear portal:

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are also useful in understanding a competitors’ content marketing strategy. Using free social media search engines like Social-Searcher and Talkwalker can provide some coverage of these forums. Here are a couple of examples for Lenskart:


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In a way, the quality of a competitor’s aforesaid aspects – Website, App, and Social Media – will depend on the quality and quantity of their talent. So, as a start-up, one should always be aware of people working at competitors and their history (more so their leadership).

The company website often provides a skeletal profile of the founders and the management team at your competitor. But that information is often intended for funding and prospects, so it is more likely to focus on their successes and less on failures.


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In the same vein, key talent leaving the competitor can also be a sign of their weakness and an opportunity for your start-up. Another thing to monitor is job openings on the competitor website and sites like LinkedIn and AngelList.

Employee and alumni reviews are also a rich source of information about the dynamics at a competitor. Portals like Glassdoor can provide useful insights in this regard. Here’s an example of the review page for Zomato, an online restaurant search and discovery service.

Source: Glassdoor (for illustration purposes only)

This is an area where start-up databases like AngelList and CrunchBase (and LinkedIn to a lesser extent) become useful in detailing the management and founder’s past experience. Again, most of this information is self-furnished, but these databases are more tightly moderated than one’s own website.

Another indicator of a competitor’s growth plans is new talent joining the firm, which can be tracked using databases like AngelList. Here’s an example of some people moves at BookMySHow, an Indian movie and events ticketing portal:


REFERENCES:

Julka, Harsimran & Gooptu, Biswarup (November 2014), “Why ‘failure’ is not a bad word in India Inc. any more,” ET Bureau, retrieved from http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-11-01/news/55657239_1_india-inc-entrepreneurs-micro-soft-accelerator.

Sarangi, Smruti R, “Why Do Most Indian Startups Fail,” retrieved from http://www.cse.iitd.ac.in/~srsarangi/startups.html.

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About the Author:

Based in Bangalore (India), Shyam Sreekumar Nair is a competitive intelligence practitioner, fortunate to have learned the ropes at leading services firms. Outside working hours, he likes reading, writing, and networking with like-minded individuals.

It should be noted that the views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the author’s current employer (Fidelity Investments) or past employers (IBM, Deloitte, KPMG). This research does not reflect in any way procedures, processes, or policies of operations within Fidelity Investments.

The examples of companies cited in this article are for illustration purposes only. The data is represented as shown in the referenced public websites. There is no intention to provide an assessment of their strategy or future direction.

If you have any feedback / comments / questions, you can reach him at [email protected].


CONCLUSIONIN

They say, inserting a start-up with a modest budget into a highly competitive niche is like throwing a raw steak in a lion’s den – it won’t last long! And how would a start-up know about the competitive environment, unless it’s monitored regularly. By devising a mechanism to monitor its competitors’ “WASP”, a start-up can avoid myopic decision-making and potentially outsmart the competition.

http://www.cse.iitd.ac.in/~srsarangi/startups.html

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-11-01/news/55657239_1_india-inc-entrepreneurs-micr

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-11-01/news/55657239_1_india-inc-entrepreneurs-micr

http://www.cse.iitd.ac.in/~srsarangi/startups.html

mailto:shyam.sreekumar.nair%40gmail.com?subject=

shyam sreekumar nair, competitive intelligence

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