Book: Business and Competitive Analysis
I was recently discussing competitive analysis and business methods with a client and I recommended the book, Business and Competitive Analysis by Craig Fleisher and Babette Bensoussan. This book helps to understand and identify better methods for competitive and business analysis. I personally found the book extremely useful in not just understanding these different methods, but also in helping me determine which methods would be applicable and useful to my organization.
It gives a brief description of the method, background and expected benefits, and then it discusses the pros and cons of the method. There are over 29 different methods in this book. I found it very useful for defining a win/loss method. It goes through a step by step approach on how to perform win/loss analysis and even gives a case study about its application.
It was a good starting point, but it was not meant to contain everything there is to know about each method. For instance, in the Win/Loss analysis method, it tells you to develop a questionnaire and even gives some suggestions on categories, but doesn’t give you examples of questions. It turns out there is a science to the number of questions and the types of questions. These are based on the objectives of the win/loss analysis. Because of the breadth of the number of methods covered in this book, it could not go into very detailed levels of explanation of the different methods. I’m sure whole books could be written about each method discussed.
It acts as an excellent reference guide for someone interested in doing competitive and business analysis. And will point you in the right direction for getting started. I would recommend this book to product marketing and management professionals and anyone else involved in these types of analysis.
Connect with Derick Workman