Competitive Intelligence Tools Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Type (On-Premise, Cloud-Based), By Application (BFSI, IT & Telecom, Automotive, Retail, Health Care, Energy, Industrial, and Education), and Regional Forecast, 2020-2027

The global competitive intelligence tools market size was valued at USD 37.6 million in 2019 and exhibiting a CAGR of 10.3% during the forecast period. The market is projected to reach USD 82.0 million by 2027 and further expand to USD 121.37 million by 2031. North America dominated the competitive intelligence tools market with a market share of 43.61% in 2019.

The global impact of COVID-19 has been unprecedented and staggering, with competitive intelligence tools witnessing a positive demand shock across all regions amid the pandemic. Based on our analysis, the global market will exhibit a stellar growth of 9.4% in 2020.  The sudden fall in CAGR is attributable to this market’s demand and growth, returning to pre-pandemic levels once the pandemic is over.

The growth in the market is mainly due to evolving trends such as increasing competition, cloud deployment, data proliferation, and others. This tool enables businesses to make informed decisions against consumer buying patterns, market trends, and market competition. Enterprises are in dire need of tools that streamline their business process by optimizing, analyzing, managing, and monitoring the exponential increase in data. Thus, the usage of such analysis tools is ubiquitously seen among all the industry verticals such as BFSI, industrial, automotive, healthcare, retail, and others. The growing investments in analytics, rising focus on digital transformation, and growing data generation are also likely to drive the growth of the market.

COVID-19 Impact

COVID-19 Pandemic to Accelerate the Demand for Competitive Intelligence Solutions among Enterprises

The COVID-19 crisis has affected all markets and customer behaviors globally. It has a substantial impact on societies and economies. With educational institutions, manufacturing & industrial facilities, financial institutions, and offices are being shut down for an undetermined period. Organizations are progressively making efforts to implement technologies that assist them through this crucial time. Thus, analytics, competitive intelligence (CI), and business intelligence (BI) professionals are focused on helping executives to monitor, analyze, and make business decisions on its competitive landscape to respond to new challenges posed by the COVID-19 outbreak.

These tools enable enterprises to gain information about the competitor's marketing strategies, such as social listening strategy, digital advertising tactics, content strategy, content marketing, and others. Enterprises are focused on deploying competitive intelligence solutions as it offers real-time competitive monitoring to track the business and economic impact during the pandemic.

• For instance, in June 2020, Fornova Ltd., a London-based travel & hospitality intelligence software provider, launched its innovative competitive Intelligence solution - "FornovaCI." The aim is to help the target audience to gain a competitive advantage amidst the post-COVID-19 recovery.

Thus, the rising adoption among enterprises is likely to propel the competitive intelligence tools market growth during COVID-19.

LATEST TRENDS

Growing Social Media Monitoring to Surge Demand for Competitive Intelligence Tools

One emerging market trend includes the growing social media monitoring to surge demand for these tools among enterprises. Enterprises are extensively using social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and others to maintain brand presence and relationships. Consumers are also very active on these social platforms and post their personal experiences of the different brands. The data on these social media platforms is also crucial to gain the competitor's insights into the market. The social media competitive intelligence tool provides complete social information of competitors and customer preference and behavior with the competitor's brand. This tool also offers real-time insights into competitor’s social channel moves and strategies. This is boosting the demand for intelligence tools.

• For instance, Digimind, Inc. provides an AI-powered competitive intelligence tool – “Digimind AI Sense” that scans images, pictures, actions on social media and collects information about the competitors’ strategy. It also detects competitors’ websites, and logos to capture their products, pricing, and business strategies.

Thus, the growing social media monitoring is likely to drive the market.  

DRIVING FACTORS

Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Competitive Intelligence Tools to Boost Market Potential

Organizations are integrating AI capabilities with competitive intelligence to gain information about the competitor’s insights and business trends in real-time. The integration of AI helps in developing holistic solutions and platforms that offer efficient automation in the analytics process. AI-powered tools help in tracking competitor’s entire digital footprint present over websites and on other portals.

AI-based competitive intelligence not only tracks the data present on the website or press release, but it also scans customer’s reviews over the digital platform. The natural language processing and deep learning tools examine and recognize sentiment, entities, categories, emotions, and topics in text with human precision. This helps in gaining complete information on the competitor’s work plan and strategies.

• For instance, in 2019, Covestro AG implemented Dcipher Analytics’ AI-based CI toolbox to gain insights into Chinese start-up investment deals. This tool helped the company to understand the structure of start-ups in the country and the stakeholder landscape.

Thus, the integration of AI is expected to drive the demand for intelligence tools.

RESTRAINING FACTORS

Incorrect Data Might Mislead Companies and Likely to Obstruct Market Growth

Competitive intelligence (CI) tools are gaining much popularity across developed nations. However, this solution is still unknowledgeable in various countries across the world. Although the tools offer complete information about competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, and strategies, many stakeholders and leaders have concern over its collected data’s genuineness. The analysis based on incomplete or incorrect data can cause faulty business strategies. This is expected to severely damage and can negatively impact the company’s growth. 

In addition, a generic and non-customized set of insights can be challenging to support different teams such as sales, marketing PR among others in the organization. This is likely to challenge the growth of the market. On the contrary, the significant cost incurred in installing and licensing CI software is expected to pose a challenge to the growth of the market.

SEGMENTATION

By Type Analysis

Growing Cloud Computing is Fueling the Demand for Cloud-based Competitive Intelligence Tools

Based on the types, the market is categorized into on-premises and cloud. Enterprises are largely adopting cloud-based software and related services. The cloud-based solutions help in lowering the expenditure on hardware and in-house storage space. Various key providers such as Cipher Systems LLC (Consensus Point Inc.), Ci Radar, LLC, and Crayon, Inc., among others, are focused on offering and delivering cloud-based competitive intelligence tools such as subscriptions based, and software as a service (SaaS), among others. This is likely to boost the growth of cloud-based CI tools. The control over generated data and secured infrastructure is expected to influence the adoption of on-premises CI software among enterprises.

By Application Analysis

Increasing Plagiarism Awareness Among Teachers is likely to Boost Software Demand

Based on the application, the market is segmented into BFSI, IT & telecom, automotive, retail, healthcare, energy, industrial, education, and others. The industrial segment is expected to hold the dominant share during the forecast period. The integration of competitive or corporate intelligence (CI) tools with industrial operations have opened new avenues of growth for the market. A new revolutionary age of manufacturing intelligence has commenced with the increased adoption of CI in manufacturing industries. Competitive intelligence solutions enabled renowned machine tools manufacturers to access their current market position.

The education industry is projected to grow at a significant CAGR with the increasing adoption of online study and schooling. Competitive intelligence solutions in the corporate eLearning offer valuable insight into employee performance. These tools also minimize online training costs while improving workplace efficiency. Besides, the rising adoption of CI tools across applications including BFSI, IT & telecom, automotive, retail, healthcare, energy, and others are likely to drive the growth of the market.

REGIONAL INSIGHTS

By region, the market has been analyzed across five major regions namely North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and South America.

North America is expected to gain a dominant market share during the forecast period. The growing demand for data analytics tools and solutions is likely to drive the demand for these intelligence tools in the regions. The US is the headquarters of all the major enterprises and industries. The dominant presence of several key players such as Crayon Group, Alexa Internet, Inc., ArchIntel, and others in the country is further likely to boost market growth. These players are focusing on launching innovative tools to improve their product portfolios.

• For instance, in October 2020, ArchIntel launched a member-based roundtable series - "Competitive Intelligence (CI) Event Membership" designed for competitive and market intelligence leaders present in the competitive intelligence sector. The aim is to boost the CI collaboration among enterprises.

Asia Pacific is expected to show rapid growth during the forecast period owing to the presence of expanding countries such as China, India, Southeast Asia, Japan, and more. The increasing industries and enterprises in these countries are likely to boost the market growth. China, leading in manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and provider of other advanced technologies is expected to lead the region's market. The countries like India, China, and Japan have maximum customer presence over social media, which drives the demand for the tools in the region. Market players are looking towards Asia-Pacific as an opportunistic region for establishing their business network.

• For instance, in December 2019, Contify, Inc., an Indian AI-enabled CI solution provider, has improved its CI offering with the launch of fully customizable portals to organize the intelligence. It is designed to drive faster access to relevant insights and storing intelligence in a common platform for easy cross-reference.

Europe is expected to gain steady growth during the forecast period owing to the increasing competition in the industrial and automotive sectors. The region is witnessing a surge in start-ups and small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are likely to boost completion in acquiring more customers and market share. This is likely to fuel the growth of the market.

• For instance, in September 2020, Comintelli launched its new AI-enabled market and CI solution - "Intelligence2day SaaS" to help consumers discover market insights.

The South America competitive intelligence tools market is witnessing the growing adoption of digitalization and advanced technologies. The ever increasing industries such as healthcare, retail, BFSI in the region are focusing on expanding businesses and thus investing in learning about the competitor analysis, its presence, and their customers’ insights. The Middle East and Africa are likely to show radical growth in the market. The governments' funding and investment to adopt innovative technologies such as AI, cloud, 5G, and others are the major factors driving the market growth in these regions.

KEY INDUSTRY PLAYERS

The Key Players Are Entering into Strategic Partnership to Expand Product Offerings

The dominant companies in the market, such as NetBase Quid, Cipher Systems, LLC, Crayon, Inc., Similarweb, Inc., Klue, Digimind, Inc., SEMrush, and others are focusing on offering advanced solutions. SEMrush offers its competitive intelligence tool - "Traffic Analytics " that allows end-users to optimize the right content, keywords, landing pages, and check the website traffic or traffic sources of any company. These companies are collaborating, acquiring, and merging with another player to provide data analysis and examine business trends. The key players of the market are investing in technologies such as AI, cloud, ML, and others to provide competitive research tools and services.

• September 2020 - Crayon partnered with G2, a peer-to-peer review site, to provide Crayon’s competitive intelligence customers direct access to G2 verified reviews to help them get a 360° view of their competitor’s product and themselves.

LIST OF KEY COMPANIES PROFILED:

• Alphabet Inc. (Google LLC) (California, United States)


• Crunchbase (California, United States)


• SEMrush (Massachusetts, United States)


• Owler (California, United States)


• Alexa Internet, Inc. (California, United States)


• Comintelli (Stockholm, Sweden)


• Talkwalker (Luxembourg)


• SpyFu (Arizona, United States)


• Crayon (Massachusetts, United States)


• NetBase Quid (California, United States)


• Slintel Inc. (California, United States)


• Consensus Point (Tennessee, United States)


• Evalueserve (Schaffhausen, Switzerland)


• SimilarWeb (New York, United States)


• Digimind (New York, United States)


• Klue Labs (Vancouver, Canada)


• CI Radar (Georgia, United States)


• Brandwatch (Brighton, United Kingdom)


• Contify, Inc. (New Delhi, India)


• ArchIntel (Virginia, United States)

KEY INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS:

• May 2022: Similar Web expanded its portfolio by acquiring Rank Ranger, a versatile ranking tracking and analysis tool that offers a wide range of analytics and search engine optimization services, including comprehensive multi-channel organic search capabilities.


• March 2022: Crunchbase introduced a Chrome extension that empowers users to harness data for uncovering fresh market opportunities efficiently. This extension delivers precise, desired data while streamlining the user's research process, ultimately saving valuable time.

REPORT COVERAGE

The market research report highlights leading regions across the world to offer a better understanding of the user. Furthermore, the report provides insights into the latest industry trends and analyzes technologies that are being deployed at a rapid pace at the global level. It further highlights some of the growth-stimulating factors and restraints, helping the reader to gain in-depth knowledge about the market.

Report Scope and Segmentation