Creating a Strategic Framework For App Competitive Intelligence With Watchful

When I speak with teams at some of the world’s biggest apps, they mention the lack of structure and process to competitive intelligence. Sometimes they hear a rumor about an upcoming competitor release or someone forwards them a screenshot. Other times they would read about a new test via TechCrunch. Most times, they wouldn’t find out anything until their competition releases the new product, feature or promotion. By then, it catches everyone by surprise and then everyone scrambles.?

Most companies don’t have the ability to systematically receive and analyze competitor product releases, which makes it incredibly challenging to see an accurate picture of what their future roadmap looks like. In the fast-moving world of mobile apps, competitive intel isn’t something that can be done once or twice a year, but an ongoing process to stay on top of changes within your competitive ecosystem.

Most companies don’t have the ability to systematically receive and analyze competitor product releases

Every mobile-native company has a pool of direct and indirect competitors. At minimum 2 or 3? apps which are worth close monitoring. Creating a strategic framework to understand and analyze your competitors upcoming plans, and seeing the key emerging trends in your space is crucial to define your own roadmap. No App is an island, and operates within a competitive landscape.

We created Watchful Product Intelligence to deliver all the critical insights on what your competitors' roadmap looks like, so teams are never caught off-guard by new product launches or significant changes. It’s designed for strategy teams and decision-makers to gain a competitive edge. Time is of the essence when it comes to App competitive intel for product and strategy teams. Being first to market with a new feature or functionality can make all the difference. Hence, seeing what’s on your competitors’ pipeline roadmap can be crucial to make incisive strategic decisions for a business.

Continuous insights and alerts to stay ahead of the curve

By analyzing new features in development, identifying tests being piloted in specific markets, and analyzing UI and UX changes, you can get a clear picture of how an app’s product roadmap is evolving - and get a clear picture of where changes come from as well as where they’re going.

competitive intelligence has to match the speed of the market

At Watchful, we wanted to make this process as easy to digest as possible for strategy teams, product teams, and other decision-makers within an organization. On the one hand, we understand that these teams might not look into every change on a daily basis. On the other hand, we know that they need to be alerted to critical insights as and when they happen. After all, competitive intelligence has to match the speed of the market. While 20 years ago competitor reviews could be done as a quarterly or annual exercise, this is no longer the case. This is why we made sure that watchful is able to show the bigger picture while highlighting and alerting to critical insights as and when they happen.

We have broken down our competitive intelligence findings into 4 categories:

• Experiments: see which new products or features are being tested. In addition to seeing screenshots of what the tests look like, you will be able to find out how long they have been active and where in the world they are carried out.
• Indications: these are early signs for upcoming features. While they are not accompanied by visuals, indications are a good way to discover product changes that are still at a very early stage - before they become an experiment.
• UI Changes: find out every new design change and update. By monitoring UI changes, you can see how design evolves across the app. It could range from something like changing the size/color of a CTA to updating a layout or changing the tab order on a menu.
• New Features: stay on top of which new product features are released.?

Defining a competitive landscape framework

The way in which strategy and leadership get most value from Watchful Competitive Intelligence is by selecting key competing apps and websites to create a competitive framework within the Watchful platform.?

Once this competitive ecosystem is defined, you will receive email updates and reports to see crucial updates as and when they happen. Time is of the essence when it comes to competitive intel, as it can make all the difference to react to market changes with the foresight of what your competitor’s next move will be.

Of course, you can log in to Watchful and see the latest discoveries, as well as which versions of the app are currently under review as the platform looks for more insights. In addition, you’ll receive email alerts and monthly reports showing all new insights. What’s more, our team of analysts can also help you cross reference the data with insights from earning calls or other significant events to provide additional context to the insight reports.

Leveraging Watchful Insights to your organization's advantage

Knowledge is power, and knowing what your competitors are planning before anyone else does can give an organization a huge competitive advantage. In some instances, our customers decide to create comparable features or products. Other times, it helps them prioritize their roadmap with the understanding of what competitors will be releasing in the near future. Most importantly, it gives business leaders and strategists across organizations peace of mind that no major update from a competitor will catch them off-guard.

knowing what your competitors are planning before anyone else does can give an organization a huge competitive advantage.

Having visibility into competitors’ product pipelines provides critical insights to development, product, and marketing teams to adapt their strategies, not only based on what their competitive landscape looks like today - but with unprecedented insight on what it will look like tomorrow.??