How to Use AI to Conduct a Competitive Intelligence Review

Start by building a baseline competitor profile for each key competitor. Use ChatGPT (with web browsing enabled) or Google Gemini to research: business model and revenue streams, recent strategic moves and announcements, leadership changes, published financial performance, product or service changes, and any publicly known challenges or controversies.

Useful prompts: 'Give me a current overview of [Competitor Company]: their primary business, recent strategic announcements, and any significant developments in the past 12 months. Cite your sources.'

'Based on public information, what is [Competitor Company]'s apparent strategic direction? What investments are they making and what markets are they focusing on?'

Verify recent information: AI tools have training data cutoffs and may not reflect developments in the past 6-12 months. Check competitor press releases, annual reports, and LinkedIn announcements for recent changes.

Competitor annual reports and results presentations are among the most valuable public intelligence sources. Upload these to Claude or ChatGPT for targeted analysis.

'Based on this annual report, what is this company's stated strategy, and where does their performance appear to diverge from that strategy?'

'What does this annual report tell us about where this company is investing and where it is cutting? What does this signal about their strategic priorities?'

'How do this company's margins and growth rates compare to what we would expect for their sector? Are there any significant anomalies?'

For UK-listed competitors, annual reports and regulatory news service announcements are freely available and provide a substantial amount of competitive intelligence that most organisations do not systematically analyse.

Once you have individual competitor profiles, use AI to synthesise across them.

'Here are profiles of our three main competitors [paste profiles]. What are the common strategic themes across the sector? Where is competitive differentiation most significant? What strategic moves appear to be creating advantage?'

'Comparing these competitor profiles with our own strategy [paste], where are we most differentiated and where do we have the most significant competitive exposure?'

'If you were advising a new entrant to this sector based on these competitor profiles, where would you identify the most significant market gaps or competitive weaknesses?'

This synthesis step is where AI adds the most distinctive value: a human analyst building the same synthesis would take several days; AI can do it in minutes, not because the AI is smarter but because it can hold all the information in scope simultaneously.

Competitive intelligence is only useful if it is current. Set up a regular cadence for refreshing competitor profiles (quarterly is manageable for most organisations) and add specific triggers (competitor announcement, market development, regulatory change) that prompt an ad hoc update.

Use ChatGPT's web browsing or Google Gemini to monitor for competitor news: 'Have there been any significant announcements from [Competitor Company] in the past 30 days?'

For UK public companies, register for RNS (Regulatory News Service) alerts from key competitors. These are required disclosures that provide timely intelligence on financial results, director changes, material contracts, and strategic announcements.

Build a shared document where competitor intelligence is maintained and updated; a Copilot-enabled SharePoint document that team members can query using Copilot is a practical infrastructure for team-level competitive intelligence management.