Think you’re the only game in town when it comes to designing instruction? Whether you are part of a large organization producing instructional/training products for internal clients, a small organization producing for external clients, or a contractor producing pre-specified instructional/training products for federal or state government clients, you have competitors.  Competition can be direct – organizations or products/services that are similar one another (e.g., course management systems such as Blackboard, Moodle or Angel; business process management services from IBM, PWC, BAH, and others) – or indirect – products/services that can be substitutes for one another (e.g., homegrown instructional/training materials, off-the-shelf packaged content from publishers and professional associations). Knowing who’s hot and who’s not in your market space helps your organization to make the right strategic decisions to keep pace with and preferably, stay ahead of current and potential competitors.  Watch the interview with Harvard University professor Michael Porter to learn why competitive knowledge is essential.

Competitive Intelligence

Kuniavsky contrasts traditional competitive analysis with competitive user experience research. However, traditional competitive analysis is more than the analysis of financial and market data. It is an ongoing process of competitive intelligence (CI), which the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) defines as the legal and ethical collection and analysis of information regarding the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intentions of business competitors. What CI is not is (a) espionnage (real or “Hollywood style”),(b) accessing proprietary information, or (c) any unethical behavior of any kind.

The need for an ongoing process also exists at the product development level, and as Kuniavsky notes, “you should check your competition repeatedly and continually throughout the lifetime of your product” (p. 420). Kuniavsky provides some techniques for gathering competitive user information first-hand (e.g., focus groups, surveys). There is also much to be gathered from public sources of data, as well as tools not traditionally used for research purposes:

• In an article in Business Information Review, Terry Kendrick offers some tips and best practices for using search engines to gather competitive data. System administrator errors/omissions often result in some real competitive gems being "open to the public." An example is the "open to the world" report on the performance of Microsoft mice vs. competition that was conducted by a third party laboratory a few years ago. It pays to monitor the Web for "oops" publications in your industry or market.
• Web 2.0 tools, particularly blogs and wikis, are gaining traction as a means of gathering and as sources of competitive information. For example, SunGard Higher Education, the administrative software that vendor provides Mason with its Student Information System, has a Facebook presence that provides competitors with insights into SunGard client needs, wants, attitudes, and complaints. Similarly, Blackboard Connections, a blog for higher education users of the Blackboard LMS, provides snippets of postings to unregistered guests. Want the full story? Just subscribe using your Mason e-mail address and hear more than you ever thought you wanted to know about Blackboard products and services. Scholars from Wuhan University have conducted a study of the potential of Web 2.0 tools for competitive intelligence. A good read despite the spotty translation.
• Competitive Client Advisory Teams (CompCATs) are similar to the Client Advisory Teams (CATs) that businesses use to reduce the risk of new product development by integrating customers into the innovation process. Ogawa and Piller's article in the MIT Sloan Management Review offers some insights into the value of CATs. CompCATs can also be used to inform you organization's innovation process and can be recruited and maintained using the Web 2.0 tools referenced above.

Bottom Line

Keeping a finger on the pulse of your customers and your competitors' customers is an integral part of the user experience research that is so essential to the instructional design process. Competitive research on an ad hoc basis - e.g., when responding to an RFP, in the middle of an instructional design project - rarely provides the breadth and depth of data that will enable you to continue to differentiate your instructional products and services from the rest of the herd. Research regularly, research often, and you'll be on the "who's hot" list more often than not.