Best Practice Report

Creating Competitive Assessments That Support Action And Enable Innovation

Using Criteria-Based Evaluations To Assess The Competition

March 6th, 2008
Christopher Andrews, VP, Research Product Management
Christopher Andrews VP, Research Product Management
With contributor:
Pascal Matzke

Summary

A competitive assessment, when executed properly, can help your company understand a technology marketplace, prioritize resources, and create a differentiated go-to-market approach. Creating effective assessments is complicated by the fact that there are few standard frameworks that help companies evaluate their competition. As a result, companies often end up creating long lists of their competitors' strengths and weaknesses that are difficult to work with and therefore not highly effective for making investment decisions. Strategy professionals can help their organizations to better understand their competitive environment if they can adequately define their objectives, focus on the right competitors, and identify the right evaluation criteria. Forrester recommends a simple, five-step framework to generate effective competitive assessments through benchmarking — one that is targeted in scope and serves as the foundation for action.

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