How can we conduct a good competitive analysis of B-side products? Share 3 points!

Competitive product analysis is a must for product development. An excellent competitive product analysis report can help product managers quickly and accurately find the right product positioning. So how can we do a good competitive analysis? Let’s see what the author says.

Everyone knows that for B-side products, competitive product analysis is very important - an excellent competitive product analysis document can help PM quickly identify the overall strategy of competitors, find the strategic breakthrough points of the product, and thus take the initiative strategically.

When I first got started, I found that major forums and websites mostly discussed competitive product analysis for C-end products, but there was very little guidance on competitive product analysis for B-end products. Because the author also took many detours in the early stage, and later managed to figure out his own set of experience, so I would like to share it with you to learn together.

Due to professional and field limitations, there are inevitably deviations or errors. I would like to ask my seniors to give me some advice. I would be very grateful.

This article will explain the author's ideas on competitive product analysis from three stages: how to find competitors, how to do analysis, and how to form a closed-loop feedback.

1. How to find competitors

For B-side products, finding competitors can be said to be the first difficulty encountered in doing competitive product analysis. The difference between B-end products and C-end products is that they are not as ubiquitous as C-end products. For example: You can see C-end products that have been categorized in major app stores or app recommendation platforms, but you cannot see all B-end products on a certain platform.

At the same time, due to the characteristics of the industry, many B-end products are delivered offline, and the information barriers between different products are even greater. So at this time, how should we find some suitable competitors?

I think there are several channels:

The fastest and most effective way is to search for competitors on some professional rating websites in the industry. For example, I used to work in the information security industry, so we would look at the "leaders" of information security products on the Gartner website every year, and then directly benchmark the world's excellent products to do competitive product analysis. There are irregular exhibitions and conferences in every industry, and you can pay attention to your competitors participating in the exhibitions. You can pay attention to the leading technology media in the industry and the companies and products they promote. Generally speaking, companies or products that can be promoted through leading media are either rich or powerful, and both are worthy of attention. Enterprise information query. For example, on business information query platforms such as Qichacha and Tianyancha, when you enter a certain company, the website will give information about companies that are competitors of this company, and you can also find some effective competitors here. Search it yourself, using Google or Baidu, I won’t say more about this.

Based on the above channels, you may have found a number of competing product names. So, what should you do in the next step of competitive product analysis?

2. How to do the analysis

When it comes to competitive product analysis for B-side products, some of you may be at a loss. Because there are too many B-side product categories, such as OA systems, CRM systems, e-commerce backend systems, etc., different products seem to have no connection with each other, and they exist entirely to solve different business scenarios. This includes me, who had just graduated and had always used QQ and WeChat, and was at a loss when I used a foreign data security product...

So, is it true that the competitive product analysis of B-end products is just like the nature of their products, with no rules to follow at all?

The author believes that this is not the case. Any B-end product must follow the basic B-end product design logic - that is, to give product decision makers a reason to buy, to reduce the workload of operation and maintenance personnel, and to make end users satisfied.

When we do competitive product analysis, we can also start from these three perspectives to explore the design concept behind a competitive product.

We can conduct analysis from three aspects: enterprise analysis, commercialization analysis, and product analysis.

1. Enterprise Analysis

We can collect basic information about competing companies, including their financing status, operating conditions, sales channels, target customers, etc. This information can be found on the official website or corporate information website. The purpose of analyzing this information is to help us understand the investment/revenue/market status of other companies in competing products, which can be used as a reference for estimating subsequent product costs/profits.

1. Commercialization Analysis

Commercialization analysis is a bit like the BRD and MRD often written by C-side PMs, but the commercialization analysis of B-side products is often more comprehensive, because the commercialization of B-side products includes product sales and pre-sales and after-sales stages. Therefore, here we can use a well-known analysis model - business canvas, to help us analyze the commercialization model of a competitor more comprehensively.

The template for the canvas is as follows:

The modules in the canvas are described as follows:

Important partners: What are the important partners of the competing companies, such as channel companies, supply chain companies, associations, etc. Key business: What key business does the competing product include? Core resources: What are the core resources of competing companies? Value proposition: This is similar to the slogan of C-end products. Describe the value proposition of the competitor's product in one sentence. Customer relationships: Where are the main customer relationships of competitors located? Channel access: Does the competitor adopt a channel sales strategy? If so, what channels are there and where are they located? Customer segmentation: segmented customer types of competitors. Cost structure: What components does the cost of competing products consist of, such as software development costs, hardware costs, etc. Revenue source: Where does the competitor's revenue come from, such as one-time software sales, licensing fees, or functional charges.

It should be noted that some information in the canvas, such as channel paths, customer segmentation, etc., cannot be directly obtained through Internet search. This information often requires asking sales or pre-sales colleagues in the market, or even colleagues from competing companies, to obtain it. Therefore, it is not necessary to fill in all the information on the canvas, just collect as much as possible.

1. Product Analysis

After completing the enterprise analysis and commercialization analysis, it is finally time for product analysis, which is what our PM is best at. But I believe that most B-side PMs will feel like crying when they do product analysis for the first time - because there is no product to play with.

Yes, that's right! B-end products are not like C-end products, where you can download software from the application market and play with it on your mobile phone at will. Most B-end products require a paid serial number, so it is common to not be able to find the product to play with.

However, there are still three ways to struggle:

Trial product. Generally speaking, many products provide trial versions. In this case, you can provide some false information (not to mislead you), register an account, download the installation package, and deploy it on your own server for trial. Generally speaking, trial products will have functional and time limitations, so the faster the experience process is, the better. Also, remember to take screenshots or record the screen while playing. Borrow products. If there is a channel company with which you have a good relationship or a customer who has used a competing product, you can build a relationship with them and borrow the competing product from them for you to experience. If you really can’t get the product itself, you can go to the official website to look at the screenshots and brochures, or search for white papers or operating manuals in Baidu Library.

So, after getting the product, how can we analyze it?

The first is the most basic five-factor analysis method, which everyone understands, so I won’t describe it in detail here. In a word, just take more screenshots.

Secondly, it is the analysis level based on business scenarios. Based on the functions provided by competitors, we need to start from actual business scenarios to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of competitors in solving business scenario problems. For example: For the data security product I am responsible for, the most basic scenario is the data leakage scenario. Then we can start from the scenario of data leakage, and step by step experience the solution ideas of competitors in this scenario, and learn to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of their ideas and processes.

Finally, we also need to analyze the entire To B decision-making process of competitors. Going back to the B-side product design logic we mentioned at the beginning, we need to analyze how competitors follow these three points in the process of designing product logic. For example: how it impresses product decision makers to decide to purchase this product; how it reduces the workload of operation and maintenance personnel; and at the end user level, how it helps them use it more comfortably. Here we can combine the five-factor analysis done in the first step to make the analysis results more accurate.

Therefore, our product analysis is basically completed, but this does not mean that the competitive product analysis is over. In order to make this competitive product analysis more effective, we still need to form a closed-loop feedback.

3. How to form a closed-loop feedback loop

After the product analysis is completed, we need to promote a closed-loop feedback loop of competitive product analysis based on the analysis results to achieve better analysis results. Specifically, the following steps need to be completed:

Form effective conclusions. Combine the results of product analysis and commercialization analysis to analyze which factors of the competitor are the most critical factors for success. Compared with other competing products, what are the differences, what are the barriers, why would customers buy it, etc. At the same time, we sort out the areas that can be learned from competing companies in terms of business models and products, extract pre-research items to be followed up, and propose methods to compete with them, whether there are new opportunities in the market, etc. Create a complete competitive product analysis document. The document content includes: basic information, enterprise analysis, product analysis, commercialization analysis, conclusions, next plans and goals, reference materials, etc. Information synchronization. Synchronize your analysis results with information within the product group and development group to see if you can find new breakthroughs from other people's perspectives. Follow up promptly. For the conclusions or requirements that need to be followed up, the analysis results should be synchronized with the product team and the boss in a timely manner, and added to the version iteration plan after evaluation.

At this point, a relatively complete competitive product analysis process is completed. If a complete analysis process template is formed within the enterprise, this process can be directly applied for subsequent analysis.

The above are some of my humble opinions on the competitive analysis of B-end products. Thank you for reading. If you have different opinions or suggestions, you are welcome to communicate in the comments. Thank you!

Source: Magic Cat