Analyzing and comparing your IT product with competitors

Who are we (our product) in this picture?

These are the results of my table at the meetup-e Products Moscow Meetup Group on April 20, 2017, which was held in the format of "world cafe".

A survey of 30 product managers at an event and my own work experience showed that not all companies analyze and compare their product with competitors' products. The company often focuses on product use experiences and the needs of current customers using them as the sole starting point for product development.

This is fraught with the fact that at some point you can skip the fork, the market will go one way, and the product of our company to another dead-end branch. An example from the life of this company Polaroid, which itself has made a revolution in the market of film cameras by offering snapshots, and then flashed the next revolution associated with the emergence of digital cameras.
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Another example can be seen in the Silicon Valley TV series when, in Series 8 of season 1, Gavin Belson from Hooli presented at Techrunch Disrupt how they cracked the Pied Piper compression algorithm, thereby killing the uniqueness of the latter, denying the right to be the first and technological advantage.

These stories demonstrate the answer to the question “Why study the products of competitors?” And the next question is “How to analyze and compare your IT product with the products of competitors?” At the meetup, we discussed the cases of the participants, which I present to you.

Case №1: Analysis of products from the point of view of the Client (B2B)

This is my story. In 2014, I worked in a large financial company. She has more than 200 partners from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad, and each of them has an active paper workflow. The average time for passing a package of documents is 7 calendar days. The cost of shipping one package is 160 rubles. The amount of the bill for the paper per month is 300,000 rubles. There are also expenses for the work of secretaries in the clerical department (staffing rates) for servicing the incoming and outgoing document flow, monthly expenses for the payment of archival storage of paper documents.

We came up with the idea to introduce legally significant electronic document management with Partners when an electronic document is signed with an electronic digital signature and is recognized as having equal legal force, as similar with a blue stamp and signature. This innovation shortens the delivery time of a document to a couple of minutes and reduces its cost to 4 rubles.

The first thing we started with was designing new business processes based on the AUSED. After that, they scanned the market for products and companies recognized by the Federal Tax Service of Russia as EDO operators. Such at that time were Dyadok (SKB Kontur), Sbis (Tensor), Ediveb (Edisoft), Electronic Express (Garant) ... a total of about two dozen and a small group of leaders. We deployed demonstration booths on which, using standard features, we tried to customize the desired business processes. This led us to a list of requirements for each of the products, which is not enough for them so that we can start.

These lists were passed to the company and asked them two questions:

1. How fast can we get this functionality?
2. How much will it cost us and will it cost us at all?

The background to these issues was not only the need to start, but also the understanding that with the growth of the involved document types and their volume (the scale of the AUSED with Partners), we will need to adapt and develop the system to suit our needs.

For example, for the start we were ready to upload and manually upload documents to / from the information system of the EDO operator for signing and exchanging documents, but later we wanted to exclude this stage by integrating the operator's IS as a service to the corporate IS. The point is - the employee signs and sends the document from the corporate IP, from the place where it appears-formed.

Their answers gave an idea of ​​which of the potential Partners is suitable for a quick start and long-term cooperation.

The next thing that interested this "Model of cooperation". We explained how much we intend to carry out the documents through their EDI systems, for which we received the following proposals:

• Someone suggested a subscription model: a certain amount is paid per month and no matter how many documents pass through the system.
• SKB Kontur proposed package tariffs - we pay for the required number of documents. At the start, this is a more profitable cooperation model than a subscription, when the number of documents held is small.
• Tensor also offered us a free flow of documents and motivated it by the fact that we are not interested in them as the only client, but as an opportunity to get another 200 clients (our Partners) for whom the workflow will be paid.

On this analysis was completed and we started preparing the competition.

Case # 2: Product Analysis from the point of view of the Company-Developer (B2B)

Dmitry works in a company that, based on its own platform, is developing a product for automating driving schools. Analysis of competitors showed that the market has not yet formed leading products and now this market is more about the automation service than about the product. For this reason, he began with customer analysis.

Dima divided clients into two types:

1. Lonely driving schools, which is enough current tool based on Excel and paper. Such clients have to "push" the service to automate their work.
2. Driving schools who are trying to work on the branch model or franchisee model. These customers have a formed need for a different business process model, which implies the existence of some IT solution, thereby achieving process uniformity, the level of service quality and a certain level of efficiency / efficiency of processes. They do not need to "push" the service, they "pull" it.

There are fewer second customers and they are more profitable. This is more concerned about those competitors who are fighting with Dmitry's company for them.

Case №3: Product Analysis from the point of view of the Company-Developer (B2C)

Konstantin had the task to develop an online food store. The first thing he started with was placing trial orders at competitors' online stores. It was studied how much and what screen forms the buyer will see until he clicks "Pay for the order."

When placing an order, he first of all paid attention to how much the competitor’s online store was passive / interactive. Passive online stores were a source of information that customers may be interested in. Interactive online stores collected information about the buyer and tried to facilitate and speed up the process of preparing for placing an order (selection process).

Konstantin also compiled a table with parameters, which eventually turned out to be about 50, and their essence was “what” do the competitors have in common and how do they differ. He clustered them and, based on this information, compiled a Perception Map (Positioning / Perception Map). Where expertly evaluated how online retailers of competitors can be perceived by customers, in which consumer clusters the competitors' products are concentrated and in which niches the competition is lower.

During the presentation of Konstantin's case to other meetup participants, one of the participants noted that the definition of their target niche in this way is consistent with the idea of ​​a “client genotype” as interpreted by Artemiy Malkov. The essence of the idea is to identify the main pain-problems of clients from the target niche and implement unique technological solutions (product functions) for them that will not be easy for competitors to copy.

General case-based conclusions

Whether B2B or B2C products are analyzed, there are the following general points

Business Process / Customer Journey Map

For B2B, this will be a description of the business process of the user of our client (his journey in our product), which ends with the necessary result of the process. For B2C, this is the client's journey to the “Thank you for the order, your money received” screen. And we look at how this journey is organized in the products of our competitors.

Customers

Only those products that compete with us in one niche need to be compared and analyzed: they are targeted at our clients / already our clients. What else is in our industry for other customer groups is worth watching, but not first of all.

Team

The frequency of release of new releases. The speed of the product. Convenience and user interface design. The amount of information online about the product. Informative site about the product. Search engine results. - All this indicates the size and quality of a competitor's team, its strengths and weaknesses.

Product Parameters

All competing products can be reduced to some limited list of parameters from which it becomes clear:

1. What is already "standard functionality" in the market and whether we are not lagging behind competitors in this?
2. What are the competitors' products focused on, what makes them different, and this is a reason to understand the reasons why they are focused on this, what are the customers, needs and money brought about.

Models of cooperation (monetization)

How our competitors receive money for a product and how much they succeeded in it.

The purpose of the analysis and comparison with competitors' products

Before starting the analysis and comparison it is necessary to determine what we want to find out and get as a result of this work. The scale of both the research and the specialists involved for this will depend on this. If you need to understand:

• With whom we are competing for our customers, then there will be enough product manager.
• What Customer Journey Map looks like in competitors' products and to create Product Comparison Parameters, here you will additionally need a systems analyst who will try to customize and reproduce our clients' business processes / travels in competitors' products.
• As some parameter is technically implemented - a product function, then a developer will also be needed and, possibly, an attempt to code something like this (reverse engineering).

What to read and look at the topic

1. If you know the word "Facilitation" and often have to hold events with a number of participants from 12 people, then the World Cafe format may be useful to you.
2. A little more detailed and simple about Perception Map - Perception map (positioning): types of maps, their use and construction .
3. Video lecture “without water” for 11 minutes from Artemiy Malkov about the “Genotype of Clients” .
4. About what is Customer Journey Map and step-by-step instructions on how to create it .
5. The article largely echoes the conclusions that we made at the meetup, but more technological - "Analysis of competitors in practice: 10 steps . "