Competitive Analysis

The Problem:

Companies need to know how their products fit into the market and compare to competitors’ products. Whether it is finding the right spot on a magic quadrant, or trying to understand the outcome of a pre-sales bake-off or proof-of-concept, a detailed, honest assessment helps a company improve its product, enhance marketing, and optimize the sales cycle through better deal qualification.

Most companies rely on two sources of information for the above analysis. One is their internal staff, which typically has the best on-the-ground information, but lacks the objectiveness needed. The analysis usually results in “I don’t understand, our stuff is better than theirs”, or similar outcomes indicating the team cannot see beyond their own creation. Internal analysis is typically also limited to comparing the core technology, and not fully considering the needs evaluated by the customer, which include the solution aspects of technology, such as fit for purpose, tools, automation, customizability, administration, etc. The other source of information is a big IT consultancy defining terms and quadrants. Are their interest aligned with yours? Do they have the hands-on, project-delivery experience to offer real analysis, or are they merely comparing market-ectures and product documentation to make their analysis? The answers are disappointing.

Real competitive analysis is a must for companies. Without it, they develop great technology, that just misses becoming a great product.


The Panoscopix Solution:

Panoscopix can provide this service off-site, with expert consultants that have years of experience building and deploying real solutions. Panoscopix consultants have worked with product development and product marketing organizations and understand the distinction between the core technology solution and the whole product, which includes how the technology fits within an operational environment that meets some customer need. Obviously, all of the information comes from the public domain, but our unique value is our experience within that vast domain and understanding of what makes and breaks a technology for a customer.

The analysis is based one or more application scenarios – putting the product into various business-value delivery situations, and evaluating it and comparing it to competitive alternatives. This leads to a firm understanding of the following:

• Out-of-the-box-experience: Approach to getting a developer through the initial learning curve with confidence, and an ability to create his/her first prototype.
• Tools/Automation: Given the real-world needs to import/export data, or define integration points, how well do the product’s tools and APIs support automation.
• Customization: Given real-world needs for integration, business rules, heterogeneous technology, and other user-driven customization, how effective are the extension APIs and frameworks. Verifying that the variety of standard components be effectively integrated.
• Simplicity: How well the developer is supported to do the basics quickly and easily, providing a basis to layer on additional learning and functionality over the evolution of a customer project.
• Completion: Given a successful project includes testing, debugging, performance tuning, administrative support, etc, in addition to the nominal business logic, how well the technology effectively support existing tools is the difference between providing insight and leaving the developer with a big, messy problem. Extensiveness and effectiveness of the negative-testing and multi-step testing are often more significant impacts on the customer experience than clever features.
• Lifecycle: How well the technology supports the transition from development to production, including administration, tuning, post-release trouble-shooting.
• Qualification: Given the above, insight into kinds of sales situations represent well-qualified opportunities, and which are long shots, allowing marketing and sales efforts to be more efficient.
• Comparison: How customer scenarios are handled by a competitor’s product. Is it a choice (your product or theirs), or a co-existence (complementary or best-of-breed). This provides insight into the sales cycle requests for competitive differentiation, customer objections, and introducing new technology into an environment already containing a competitive alternative.

Deliverables:

Examples of the deliverables provided in this service:

• Formulation of customer scenario(s) to be considered, prioritization, and analysis goals.
• Stand up an evaluation environment that can involve several different products or versions for analysis.
• Analysis of the OOTBE (out-of-the-box-experience).
• Analysis of the technology as a whole product, evaluating the dimensions that matter to customers.
• Competitive analysis – evaluate how a similar scenario would be handled by a competitor’s product.
• Sales analysis – scenario-oriented strengths, weaknesses, and competitor objections and responses.