Competitor Benchmarking Tool

Harness Competitive Benchmarking to Drive Growth

AlphaSense makes it easy to benchmark your business against competitors to identify new growth opportunities and areas of improvement. With features like trending topics, real-time alerts, and customizable watchlists, you can leverage the vast content universe available in the platform to gain a holistic view of the competitive landscape—faster than ever.

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FAQs

Why You Need a Competitor Benchmarking Tool

In today’s world of overwhelming amounts of insights and fast-moving markets, it’s critical for organizations to have their finger on the pulse of what’s trending and changing in their market. When it comes to competitive strategy, reactive moves—even those informed by real-time data—are not enough to stay ahead of the curve.

Instead, organizations need an effective way to cut through excessive noise and pinpoint the insights that truly matter, so that they are never surprised by competitors’ moves and are instead ready with a proactive strategy.

An AI-powered competitor benchmarking tool, like AlphaSense, makes this task easy by streamlining data curation and market landscape mapping steps, so you can get straight to strategic analysis. Instantly gain a complete picture of your competitive position and that of other top players in your industry, whether they were previously on your radar or not.

With AI-based capabilities like sentiment analysis and generative AI, AlphaSense enables you to not only stay aware of industry and competitor events, but also understand how key stakeholders (i.e. investors, customers, and peers) feel about them and gain insight into market-moving events.

The result? Your organization can be the first to capitalize on new opportunities, identify market trends, and gain a competitive advantage that advances your market position.

How AlphaSense Accelerates Your Competitive Benchmarking

Aggregated Market Research

AlphaSense houses over 10,000 trusted content sources, including:

Company documents including SEC and global filings, earnings transcripts, company presentations, press releases, event transcripts, and more
Industry research from the world’s top analysts
Unique industry expert perspectives
News outlets
Company and competitor websites
Government and regulatory data

This includes two content sets exclusive to AlphaSense:

Wall Street Insights® – a leading collection of broker research covering global sector themes, industries, and companies from 1,000 sell-side and independent firms
AlphaSense Expert Insights – 40,000+ transcripts of one-on-one calls with industry experts, customers, professionals, competitors, and former and current executives, with the ability to conduct your own 1:1 expert calls for less

AlphaSense’s content set spans our broad cross-sector capabilities, including intelligence and insights to monitor clinical pipelines, track new developments and competitor moves, and assess deal making opportunities.

Semantic Search

With our AI search technology, you no longer have to manually CTRL-F through fragmented research documents and reports. Instead, our smart intent-based search recognizes what you are looking for and surfaces relevant results—while filtering out the excess noise. This means you can shave hours of time conducting competitor research and be more confident in the accuracy and comprehensiveness of your results.

Our patented AI search feature Smart Synonyms™ identifies phrases and keywords that are relevant and useful to your search query, removing the risk of missing critical insights.

Sentiment Analysis

Our sentiment analysis and natural language processing (NLP) technology analyzes market perceptions about a given company, industry, or topic, and color-codes positive and negative sentiment for easy recognition. These AI-driven features work in seconds, saving hours previously spent combing through dozens of earnings reports.

Sentiment analysis is instrumental in earnings analysis, as it uncovers the nuance and context in a company’s messaging on relevant topics and themes.

Smart Summaries

Our Smart Summaries feature leverages our 10+ years of AI tech development and draws from a curated collection of high-quality business content.

With Smart Summaries, you can:

Glean instant earnings insights, reducing time spent on research during earnings season
Quickly capture company outlook by accessing Wall Street’s perspective on competitive landscape and reasoning behind upgrades and downgrades
Generate an expert-approved SWOT analysis—straight from former competitors, partners, and employees

Monitoring, Analysis, and Collaboration Tools

AlphaSense is designed to help users find insights faster. In order to do that, we offer a number of tools that extend beyond search and summarization to help users accelerate research tasks.

Customizable Dashboards create a centralized information hub for monitoring key companies and themes, while tailored real-time alerts provide real-time updates.
Powerful collaboration tools like Notebook+ and commenting features help teams manage and share insights more effectively. Check out the 5 Competitive Intelligence Templates to Use in AlphaSense’s Notebook.
Table Tools allow you to move faster with spreadsheet-style visualizations directly from company filings, so you can chain together, edit, and optimize tables for analysis.
Image Search allows you to discover insights buried in charts to quickly capture data without reading through pages of documents.
Snippet Explorer allows you to effortlessly look at any topic or theme and all its historical mentions in a single view.
Our Black-lining feature allows you to automatically identify any QoQ changes in SEC filings.
Automated Monitoring allows you to set up real-time alerts that send updates on any relevant market movements, news, emerging trends, and competitor activities. We also generate snapshots of companies and topics regularly that keep you ahead of the curve with actionable insights.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a competitor benchmarking tool?

A competitor benchmarking tool is a software or service that enables companies to compare their positioning against their competitors in various aspects, such as market share, pricing, share of voice, product features, marketing strategy, customer satisfaction, and more. These tools typically gather data from multiple sources, including public databases, social media, and web scraping.

AlphaSense stands out from its competitors because it sources content from thousands of premium, proprietary, public, and private sources—which include insights you cannot find elsewhere. Our content includes company documents such as earnings transcripts, SEC and global filings, and press releases, as well as news and trade journals, broker research, and expert calls.

What are the features of a competitor benchmarking tool?

Competitor benchmarking tools offer a variety of features, and depending on your specific business needs and use cases, you may benefit from some of these more than others. Some typical features include:

Market analysis
Performance comparison
Product analysis
Social media monitoring
SEO analysis
Customer feedback analysis
Pricing intelligence

AlphaSense is a powerful competitor benchmarking tool because it’s designed for comprehensive competitive research and analysis, with advanced AI features for added scope, speed, and accuracy. AlphaSense’s key features include:

Extensive out-of-the-box content library – enables you to combine valuable internal content with 10,000+ private, public, premium, and proprietary external data sources—all in one platform.
AI search and summarization technology – tools like sentiment analysis, generative AI, smart synonym technology, and a relevancy algorithm work together to help you extract all the most relevant insights, quickly and without excess noise.
Integration capabilities – purpose-built AI allows you to search across all internal IP and external company content to find crucial insights in a secure and automated way, while catching what other platforms may miss.
Monitoring, analysis, and collaboration tools – a suite of tools that accelerate research workflows, help you share key insights across your team, and streamline quantitative and qualitative analysis.

What competitive data is included in a benchmarking tool?

Competitive data included in a benchmarking tool can vary depending on the tool’s capabilities and the specific needs of the business. However, some common types of competitive data include:

Market sizing
Earnings analysis
Product features and specifications
Customer base
Segment and revenue streams
Distribution channels
Industry trends
SWOT analysis
Historical data
Real-world expert feedback

In the AlphaSense platform, you get all of this data, and much more—so you can feel empowered to make informed decisions, identify areas for improvement, and develop strategies to gain a competitive edge in the market.

How customizable is AlphaSense’s competitive benchmarking tool?

AlphaSense’s competitive benchmarking tool is highly customizable. You can create customized dashboards and watchlists in the platform for all the specific competitors you need to keep track of, as well as any relevant market trends and themes.

Our automated monitoring features also allow you to set up real-time alerts that send you notifications on any relevant market movements, news, emerging trends, and competitor activities that you are interested in.

What are the steps of competitive benchmarking?

For a detailed tutorial on how to conduct competitive benchmarking, as well as competitive analysis, check out our post: How to Conduct a Comprehensive Competitive Landscape Analysis and our Competitive Intelligence Guide.

Additionally, don’t miss our Competitive Intelligence for Leading Corporations page.

What is the difference between benchmark analysis and competitor analysis?

Benchmark analysis and competitive analysis are both valuable tools for understanding a company’s performance and its position within the market, but they serve slightly different purposes and focus on different aspects of analysis.

Benchmark analysis compares a company’s performance against predefined standards or benchmarks, which may include market indices, industry standards, best practices, or historical performance metrics of the company itself. It aims to identify areas where a company is lagging behind or exceeding established benchmarks and standards. Data for benchmark analysis may come from internal sources (e.g., historical data, company reports) as well as external sources (e.g., stock market index, industry reports, best practice standards).

Competitive analysis, on the other hand, compares a company’s performance, strategies, products, or services directly against those of its competitors within the sector. The focus is on understanding the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats posed by competitors. It aims to identify areas where a company can differentiate itself, gain a competitive advantage, or mitigate competitive threats. Data for competitive analysis often comes from external sources such as market research reports, competitor websites, social media monitoring, customer reviews, and industry publications.

These analyses are important for informing strategic decision-making and driving continuous improvement within a company, and AlphaSense is an ideal tool for both benchmarking and competitive analysis.

How can I use a competitor benchmarking tool to improve my investing strategy?

Using a competitor benchmarking tool can provide valuable insights to inform your investing strategy in several ways:

Identifying Market Trends: A competitor benchmarking tool can help you identify up-and-coming market trends by analyzing competitor performance, product offerings, and customer feedback. This information can help you discover industries with strong growth potential, guiding your investment decisions.
Assessing Competitive Positioning: By comparing key metrics such as market share, revenue growth, and profitability with those of top competitors, you can assess how well a company is positioned within its industry. This analysis can help you identify companies with a competitive advantage or those that are undervalued relative to their peers.
Evaluating Management Effectiveness: Benchmarking tools can provide insights into the effectiveness of a company’s management team by comparing operational efficiency, profitability ratios, and other performance metrics with industry benchmarks. Companies with strong management teams may present better investment opportunities.
Understanding Industry Dynamics: Competitive benchmarking allows you to gain an in-depth understanding of industry dynamics, including competitive threats, barriers to entry, and regulatory risks. This knowledge can help you assess the long-term viability of an investment within a particular industry.
Identifying Growth Opportunities: By analyzing competitors’ revenue streams, geographic expansion, and strategic initiatives, you can identify potential growth opportunities for companies within your investment portfolio. Companies that are successfully executing growth strategies may present attractive investment opportunities.
Tracking Performance Over Time: Continuously monitoring competitors’ performance using benchmarking tools allows you to track trends and developments within industries or sectors. This information can help you adjust your investment strategy accordingly and capitalize on changing market dynamics.

How do I select a competitor benchmarking tool?

No two competitor benchmarking tools are exactly the same—their features, capabilities, price points, and areas of focus vary widely and serve different needs. As you research potential tools and move toward a purchase decision, ask these key questions:

What are your goals? – Identify why you need a competitor benchmarking tool and what you want to accomplish.
What is your budget? – Nail down this practical step so you can immediately limit your search to tools that fit your price range.
What capabilities do you care about most? – Learn about the features offered by top competitor analysis tools and list the ones you need most. Prioritize tools that offer them.
Which systems does it need to integrate with? – Ensure the tool you choose can integrate with existing tools and systems in your workflow.
What are my peers using? – Getting recommendations from non-competitive peers can be a great way to find quality providers you can trust.

Once you have a short list, take time to schedule demos, do a free trial if you can, and talk to sales reps to get a firsthand sense of how the tool can help you succeed.

Pro tip: Pay attention to each provider’s onboarding and customer success strategies. You want to work with a company that will provide ongoing support to help you accelerate time to value and continually maximize ROI.

For additional guidance on choosing a competitive intelligence tool, don’t miss our buyer’s guides:

9 Competitive Intelligence Tools to Trial in 2024

12 Competitor Monitoring Tools to Trial in 2024

Try AlphaSense for Free

AlphaSense offers the most comprehensive platform for enterprise professionals who want to enhance their competitive intelligence strategy. From an unmatched content library and proprietary AI search technology, to customizable alerts and an intuitive user interface, AlphaSense is the all-in-one competitive intelligence platform best equipped to help leading companies succeed.

Explore firsthand how AlphaSense can help you get the competitive edge.