ReportLinker Blog

Which platform select for a powerful Competitive Intelligence solution?

Written by ReportLinker | Jan 10, '2022

During our latest webinar "Harness new technology to improve your competitive monitoring", our insight expert Clare, gave valuable tips on how to choose an efficient AI-enabled Competitive Intelligence solution.

Watch the 3 min recap video to know more:

 

As detailed in the session, there are 2 types of solutions when building out a CI solution: you can either build out the solution yourself, or rely on an AI-enabled platform that already exists in the market space.

Home made Solution

The advantage of this first option is that you can tailor the platform to the specific use cases that you’ve identified for the business. However, the main disadvantages are the time and the resources that it will require.

In addition, you must take several elements into consideration such as:

  • What infrastructure do you have in place?
  • What will be the skills or the human resources in terms of talent that you will actually need in the organization to help you build this out?
  • What data sources do you have available or will need to acquire to actually achieve the insights you’re looking for.
  • And ultimately, the platform itself: what platform deliverable will you actually set up to ingest data and then surface the insights and diffuse that to stakeholders?

It is the most customizable solution, but it definitely is the most expensive. 

AI-enabled Solution

The second option of relying on an AI-enabled platform that already exists offers several advantages:

  • First and foremost, cost, which is a lot lower.
  • You can benefit from the fact that the vendors have already trained their technology for a broad set of use cases that will be useful to you.
  • Thirdly, you are also able to take advantage of the learning curve of those platforms and the fact that they are getting better and better at what they do at each iteration.

At ReportLinker, we see that our clients find a real competitive advantage in using an AI enabled platform.