Landscape Benchmarking
Keep your friends close and your competitors closer.
Active monitoring of the actions of key market participants is essential to maintaining proper pacing in the marketplace. Competitors are not just adversaries, but they are also your peers, which can provide strong indications of performance. When thoughtfully surveying the competitive landscape, we can assess if we are trending below industry averages and need to turnaround operations before being punished by investors or, on the flip side, if we are over-engineering solutions and not capturing realizable price and profit margins. Regardless of the scenario, establishing comparative metrics and detailed insights on other market players can be an effective barometer for how far we’ve come or how long we still need to go (and if it is worth going at all).
Early warnings can also alert to shifting consumer preferences, future disruptive innovations, and industry re-defining acquisitions. Like athletes that study countless hours of opponent film and follow farm leagues to keep aware of the next generation of standouts, business leaders must closely watch the playing field to anticipate next moves and new players, exploit vulnerabilities, and stay ahead of the game.
How Pointe can help
Pointe leverages its heritage in competitive analysis, backed by agency-proven HUMINT research techniques, and its consulting lens to assess competitive landscapes and deep-dive on potential threats and opportunities. Our approach is unapologetically evidence-based and grounded in deep industry expertise as well as creative analytics. We help our clients stay ahead of the curve by:
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Framing competitive landscapes according to meaningful segment dimensions to identify and evaluate incumbents and insurgents
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Determining threat and opportunity levels from competitors as well as ensuing strategic actions (e.g., aggressive pricing, contractual lockdowns, customer conversions)
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Benchmarking competitor capabilities across marketing, distribution, product, and R&D functions
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Developing sell-against playbooks to inform go-to-market strategies based on sensitive spots and retaliation potential
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Conducting war gaming sessions and scenario simulations to anticipate future moves and prepare contingencies
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Monitoring competitor pricing and commercializing pipelines to cogently time and price our activities
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Tracking R&D and M&A activity to refine future investment decisions
Relevant use cases
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Pointe benchmarked product, distribution, and manufacturing capabilities to develop head-to-head battlecards with a global machinery manufacturer. Our work allowed the client to leapfrog industry peers and engineer a winning operating model and supply chain strategy to deliver best-in-class performance
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Pointe collaborated with a financial services firm to optimize its technology portfolio and talent mix by developing comprehensive strategy maps of market participant positioning and subsequently conducting in-depth comparisons with top-quartile firms in the areas of digital innovation and employee value proposition