Competitive and market intelligence tools allow organizations to track, collect, store, analyze and disseminate information and insights — collected from internal and external sources — about competitors, markets and customers. These sources include, but are not limited to, news, social media, websites, industry databases, syndicated research and financial filings. These tools provide a centralized platform for all market and competitive intelligence, which can be used by a range of stakeholders within an organization for their specific needs (e.g., corporate strategy, product strategy, differentiated messaging or sales enablement).
Win/loss analysis is a strategic business practice that seeks to understand the reasons why deals were won or lost, or led to no-decision scenarios. This could include product strengths/weaknesses, sales and marketing effectiveness, pricing, buying experience and company reputation. In B2B organizations with mature win/loss analysis practices, this commonly involves surveying and/or interviewing prospective buyers and customers after a sales cycle to understand why they chose an organization and its products/services over others they evaluated. While some organizations choose to run their win/loss analysis programs in-house, others prefer to outsource this capability to third-party providers to minimize bias and pursue deeper insights. Win/loss analysis providers offer a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research solutions to help organizations surface detailed and actionable insights. At its core, this is largely a service-led market — supported by software — to design, implement and deliver win/loss analysis services. However, software plays an increasingly important role in how these services are executed and how insights are delivered to clients. Select providers lead with win/loss analysis software and tools as their core offering.