How and what to learn from competitors
“ Gotcha. Traitor. LOL ". Somehow people react that way, having learned that I have an iPhone.
(The author is a person from Microsoft - a comment on the translation. )
And here I stand before you, convicted of using a competitor's product - and plead guilty.
But, if you put aside bloggers with their posts in the spirit of "caught", in fact there are real reasons for using products / services other than those made by you (or the company where you once worked). You can write at least a thousand tweets, but I think everyone knows all the same. The approach used in many industries - to underestimate or even avoid competition - is described and studied in detail, and the conclusions to which he leads indicate that competition is good.
The ability to learn from competitors not only needs to be developed from the entire product development team, but it can also be a kind of skill that makes sense to sharpen. Let's take a closer look at everything related to the use of competitors' products.
The fact that competitors' products need to be used is an obvious fact. You need to know what consumers / companies compare you with when making a purchasing decision. They will take into account many factors, and you should know them - in terms of their importance not only for sales and marketing, but also for the design process of your products.
')
It is easy to fall into the trap and start making comparative lists of characteristics or to clone competitors' products - perhaps for this you are tracking the competition. But this method is quite weak. Part of planning your product / service is creating your unique value proposition: maybe it is functionality, price, implementation, or, for example, design?
It is not enough just to become the same as a competitor (perhaps more reputable), and in studying competitors just for the sake of parasitism on their value propositions, there is no sense. In general, if at the last moment you simply add a “cool chip” from a competitor to the development plan of your product, this will not work for buyers and, in addition, will be sewn with white threads. This is the development "on the basis of the comparative list."
Product development is a challenge. There is no magic here. And, even worse, most people, creating products of the same “category”, draw insights, ideas and technologies from the same sources. Products with great success can often be distinguished from second-rate products, lagging far behind, with only a few of thousands of features.
Studying a competitor makes it possible to evaluate your choice in a completely different context. When you make decisions about a product, you do it in terms of your company, strategy, business model, and people / talent. And what if you change any of this? This is what knowledge of competition allows you to do, and mostly - for free (no consultants or top-secret studies are needed).
What does it mean to study competitors well? What are common mistakes?
When studying competition there are a few common techniques applied for the best of intentions. At the same time, there are ways to conduct a competitive analysis, after which many questions still remain.
Worse yet, competitive analysis can be carried out carelessly or in the spirit of "let's get rid of this rather." With this approach, perhaps the most valuable source of information for long-term product design is lost.
There are a lot of potential problems, and here are a few examples of those that I met:
There is a reason why Patton often referred to Thucydides’s treatise “The History of the Peloponnesian War”. This is a thorough and thoughtful analysis that goes beyond the story of who won in what battle, instead penetrating the minds, culture and thought processes of people. Competition in business is not war and should not be considered, either literally or figuratively (at least, the stakes are relatively low, and business is an endless series of fights and battles, not a desire to end it all once and for all). Nevertheless, it is very important to ponder and understand tactics, the decision-making process, the allocation of resources, etc.
Here are a few techniques that are often used in conjunction with the use of the product. The most important thing, of course, is to use the product as the main tool wherever it is intended to be used, and in the way it was laid during its development. There are a number of ways to share such raw data found during the study of a product:
Of course, regardless of the approach, by all means write down the results of your work (writing means thinking about!) And share with the team ( learning through sharing knowledge ).
These are just some common pitfalls and approaches to competitive analysis. They are much more. Feel free to share your favorite approaches in the comments ( with Stephen, of course, and here too, we will give him a note ).
After all, exploring competitors is a job for the whole team. People who directly do the work itself need to study competition - this is important. This task is not for administrative staff and not for those who are not involved in the development. The management studies competition, and not just receives reports on competitors. Experts in the areas of knowledge that use the product should go deeper into the details of the competition (hardware, software, subsystems, peripherals, API, etc.).
Be obsessed with competitor research. Is always. This has never been more relevant than in the fast-growing and dynamic world of products, where information flies instantly, and the scope and complexity are as huge as ever.
(The author is a person from Microsoft - a comment on the translation. )
And here I stand before you, convicted of using a competitor's product - and plead guilty.
But, if you put aside bloggers with their posts in the spirit of "caught", in fact there are real reasons for using products / services other than those made by you (or the company where you once worked). You can write at least a thousand tweets, but I think everyone knows all the same. The approach used in many industries - to underestimate or even avoid competition - is described and studied in detail, and the conclusions to which he leads indicate that competition is good.
The ability to learn from competitors not only needs to be developed from the entire product development team, but it can also be a kind of skill that makes sense to sharpen. Let's take a closer look at everything related to the use of competitors' products.
What for?
The fact that competitors' products need to be used is an obvious fact. You need to know what consumers / companies compare you with when making a purchasing decision. They will take into account many factors, and you should know them - in terms of their importance not only for sales and marketing, but also for the design process of your products.
')
It is easy to fall into the trap and start making comparative lists of characteristics or to clone competitors' products - perhaps for this you are tracking the competition. But this method is quite weak. Part of planning your product / service is creating your unique value proposition: maybe it is functionality, price, implementation, or, for example, design?
It is not enough just to become the same as a competitor (perhaps more reputable), and in studying competitors just for the sake of parasitism on their value propositions, there is no sense. In general, if at the last moment you simply add a “cool chip” from a competitor to the development plan of your product, this will not work for buyers and, in addition, will be sewn with white threads. This is the development "on the basis of the comparative list."
Product development is a challenge. There is no magic here. And, even worse, most people, creating products of the same “category”, draw insights, ideas and technologies from the same sources. Products with great success can often be distinguished from second-rate products, lagging far behind, with only a few of thousands of features.
Studying a competitor makes it possible to evaluate your choice in a completely different context. When you make decisions about a product, you do it in terms of your company, strategy, business model, and people / talent. And what if you change any of this? This is what knowledge of competition allows you to do, and mostly - for free (no consultants or top-secret studies are needed).
What does it mean to study competitors well? What are common mistakes?
Common mistakes
When studying competition there are a few common techniques applied for the best of intentions. At the same time, there are ways to conduct a competitive analysis, after which many questions still remain.
Worse yet, competitive analysis can be carried out carelessly or in the spirit of "let's get rid of this rather." With this approach, perhaps the most valuable source of information for long-term product design is lost.
There are a lot of potential problems, and here are a few examples of those that I met:
- Surface use of the product . Too often, the analysis of a competing product itself turns into a list of characteristics. Well, go to the store, play with it for a few minutes. Maybe it makes sense to ask a friend or neighbor what they think of him. The use of a competing product must be deep and long lasting. You need to use it as the main product, without switching back to the old ways of working. Often it takes weeks, or even more. This also applies to reviewers. Walt Mossberg famously went on a 10-day trip to France only with an iPad, without any laptop. This is the way to use the product.
- The tendency to think "like you", and not as competitors . It is necessary to use a competing product as the developers intended. No need to grab the customization utility to turn it into something familiar. Even if there is a mode there that switches it into this familiar form (as a bridge for the competition that they provide) - do not use it. Use native formats. Use source interfaces and functionality. Follow the workflow laid down in the product. The key is to forget the movements that you are used to on an intuitive level and develop new habits.
- Bid on the fact that competitors act the same (or even just reasonable) . If you think like competitors, you have to make decisions that they can make. Of course, in fact, you cannot do this or know for sure, and here intuition begins to work with respect to the prospects for product development (this is why blogs that predict future directions in product development often make mistakes). You need to literally immerse yourself in the culture, limitations, resources, etc. that affects your competitors. The fact is that a competitor is not going to “fix” his product in order to turn it into yours. That is, the question is what a competitor will do, being in his own conditions and environment, and not what you would have done in your own, developing a product-follower. This may seem unreasonable. One of the classic examples here is whether to allow MacOS to be used by other PC makers or not. You can find arguments for both solutions, both earlier and now. But what is right or permissible in one situation does not make sense in another. The overall context also includes a time frame, due to which the answer may be radically different.
- The assumption of static world . Having tested a competitor's product, you can feel confident, because they missed some functions or unsuccessfully implemented something. This is a static view of the world. Keep in mind that competitive analysis is a two-way process. If you notice a flaw, it is likely that the competitor knows about it. When everyone notes that there is no copy / paste on the phone, it will be wrong to think that for the development team this is news and this miscalculation will remain a competitive advantage.
Approaches
There is a reason why Patton often referred to Thucydides’s treatise “The History of the Peloponnesian War”. This is a thorough and thoughtful analysis that goes beyond the story of who won in what battle, instead penetrating the minds, culture and thought processes of people. Competition in business is not war and should not be considered, either literally or figuratively (at least, the stakes are relatively low, and business is an endless series of fights and battles, not a desire to end it all once and for all). Nevertheless, it is very important to ponder and understand tactics, the decision-making process, the allocation of resources, etc.
Here are a few techniques that are often used in conjunction with the use of the product. The most important thing, of course, is to use the product as the main tool wherever it is intended to be used, and in the way it was laid during its development. There are a number of ways to share such raw data found during the study of a product:
- Comparison of characteristics . The most commonplace way is to make a huge list of characteristics and compare products by it. This is suitable for some, especially consumers. But for the design of the product, this method is the least useful. The list of characteristics is only as good as the characteristics themselves. Everyone knows how easy it is to present a product as multi-functional or low-functional — simply by choosing the necessary set of missing characteristics. You can also write so incomprehensibly that it will not disassemble whether this function is present or not: you can add the “WiFi” item, or you can add “WiFi a / b / g / n”, thereby changing the alignment of who won. It is possible to lead to a false conclusion by scoring functions or simply by counting them - this doubles the error of the check list, since there is a double evaluation here.
- SWOT . A common “single-slide” approach is to consider a competitor from the perspective of “strengths,” “weaknesses,” “opportunities,” and “threats.” It is very difficult to make this method work — again because of the context — but in describing all this, you force yourself to clearly see the flaws and errors in your own product. Personally, I don’t like the use of the term “threats” because it starts to resemble a comparison with war and sports, but you can see them as risks that a consumer may not choose your product / service. SWOT analysis is often used by the marketing team, because you can mix together short-term market tactics (opportunities).
- Scenario comparison . A good way to build a continuous approach to competitive analysis is to take into account more complete scenarios. If you are testing battery life, do not just turn on the movie, but turn on the movie along with the radio and mail, for example. As with everything, it is important to choose scenarios that exactly correspond to what the product was created for and how it is supposed to be used, and not based on how your product / service is made. Scenario comparison can measure the number of clicks / gestures, execution time, consumed resources, etc.
- Competitive reviews . My favorite way to check whether I really managed to penetrate the competitor’s mindset was to challenge myself and try to test my own product from his point of view. You can also write a press release of a competing product. I remember once I wrote a whole “press kit” about what Visual C ++ became, as if I were on the Borland C ++ team. It was a lot of fun. Instead of concentrating on developing for Windows (3.0!), I focused on compiler speed, code size, a set of command line options, etc. This was something Borland would focus on. I looked at Visual C ++ from their side and noted what options were missing, slow work, etc. Despite the fact that Visual C ++ 1.0 had a Windows development environment, a resource editor, a class library, and much more, all from Borland.
Of course, regardless of the approach, by all means write down the results of your work (writing means thinking about!) And share with the team ( learning through sharing knowledge ).
To be obsessed
These are just some common pitfalls and approaches to competitive analysis. They are much more. Feel free to share your favorite approaches in the comments ( with Stephen, of course, and here too, we will give him a note ).
After all, exploring competitors is a job for the whole team. People who directly do the work itself need to study competition - this is important. This task is not for administrative staff and not for those who are not involved in the development. The management studies competition, and not just receives reports on competitors. Experts in the areas of knowledge that use the product should go deeper into the details of the competition (hardware, software, subsystems, peripherals, API, etc.).
Be obsessed with competitor research. Is always. This has never been more relevant than in the fast-growing and dynamic world of products, where information flies instantly, and the scope and complexity are as huge as ever.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/168311/
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