How to Paint a Complete Picture of the Competition

When pursuing the next opportunity, it’s [of course] important to understand the competitive landscape—who are the major players? how entrenched is the incumbent contractor? The answer to these questions lies in two fundamental areas of research 1) human intelligence, and 2) data-driven market intelligence. The only way to paint a complete picture of the competition around any opportunity requires both elements and requires them to work in concert.

Getting from A to Z

Arriving at the desired fidelity for any answer can take time, but with a standard and disciplined approach to research, results are consistent and consistently valuable.

Let’s say that “A” is the most basic understanding of competition around an opportunity, or maybe even no understanding at all. And “Z” is intimate knowledge of who will participate, the nature of their competition, teaming alliances and pricing structure. Where do you begin this journey of understanding?

Start with data-driven market intelligence

We like to start the opportunity qualification journey with an initial pre-qualification based on objective data-driven market intelligence. When casting a sufficiently broad net, it’s just not realistic to begin with human intelligence. We need to quickly identify the major players for this opportunity, their relevant past performance and teaming history. Fortunately, there’s a sea of data available to answer these questions and a platform (Federal Compass) that makes it readily available.

Our algorithms identify competition based on a ten-point scale, including degrees of customer fit, service/offering fit and market presence for each potential competitor. Our system literally analyzes thousands of competitors for each opportunity in real-time so that you’re presented with a complete picture of the competitive landscape.

We’re halfway there, now it’s time for the human touch.

Augment your human intelligence

Anecdotes are trouble when it comes to research. It’s also problematic to have all these little nuggets of human intelligence scattered across your team and not readily available to decision makers. We make it easy to pivot from data-driven research to more intimate qualification with user-defined fields attached to every piece of content across our system. When it’s time to dive deep, the collective knowledge of your team is now presented alongside objective data-drive market intelligence. Just like that we’ve arrived at a complete picture of the competition for any pursuit.