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Competitive Analysis

Internal Document

Every software product in the world has competition. Whether the competition is the status quo or another strong competitor, it is important for your sales and marketing staff to understand where your application stacks up against the competition.

Customers will commonly look for competitors even if your solution solves every problem for them so this information is critical.

There are a few key items you should compare:

• Price/Benefit - While you can more than likely explain why your solution is better value for money, can your customer. Could someone keen on your solution justify it to their CFO based on information provided in your documentation alone? If not, you need to remedy that.
• Problem Statement - Check what problem you say your product is solving versus what your competitors say. It’s important to ensure you are solving something that the customer considers to be a big problem otherwise the competitor may be at an advantage.
• Solution - What does the competitor say they are solving? Compare each item and have an answer for the customer.

Writing a competitive analysis is quite like working as a journalist comparing products for the market.

The following site is a good example of a comparison site showing a competitive analysis.