TL;DR

• Competitive intelligence platforms help companies collect and analyze competitor data for sales teams.
• Popular platforms include Crayon, Kompyte, Klue, and CI Radar.
• Crayon is highly regarded for its overall ease of use and implementation, plus its interconnectivity with win-loss providers like Clozd.
• Kompyte is a more affordable option for small businesses.
• Check out review sites like G2 and TrustRadius to find user feedback.

One of the questions we often hear from our clients is: “What’s the best competitive intelligence platform?” 

These clients are eager to push competitive insights from Clozd into dynamic “battlecards” that can help their sales teams win competitive deals, and they value our input on which platforms they should consider. 

What is a competitive intelligence platform?

A competitive intelligence (CI) platform is a specialized software tool designed to help companies collect, analyze, and manage information about their competitors. 

These platforms scan the web for interesting competitor data from websites, press releases, social media, review sites, and more to provide real-time updates about what competitors are up to.

Once the data is captured and curated, these platforms also help users generate sales-friendly battlecards by compiling the most crucial competitive insights into a quick-reference document or web page for salespeople to reference during the sales process. Effective battlecards equip salespeople with crucial insights, talk tracks, and data points that can help them win competitive deals.

What are the most popular competitive intelligence platforms?

When it comes to true competitive intelligence platforms, there are only a handful of vendors to consider. A quick web search will turn up dozens of potential providers, but if you’re looking for a solution that helps you efficiently monitor the web for competitive insights and curate battlecards for your sales team, you only have a few options. 

Crayon

‎Since 2014, Crayon has been a consistent leader in the competitive intelligence space. They’ve won three consecutive PMA Pulse awards (2021–23) for being the best competitive intelligence software. Clozd clients who use Crayon tout its powerful monitoring capabilities and the fact that it taps into more data sources than any other CI platform. Crayon is also highly-regarded for its overall ease of use and implementation, plus its interconnectivity with win-loss providers like Clozd and TruVoice. Learn more about the Clozd-Crayon integration.

Kompyte

Like Crayon, Kompyte was founded in 2014. After emerging as a key player in the competitive intelligence space, Kompyte was acquired by SEMrush in 2022. Kompyte has garnered a Gartner PeerInsights score of 4.5 which is better than both Klue and CI Radar. Amongst Clozd clients, Kompyte has been a popular choice for small businesses and startups because it’s a more affordable and simplistic solution. If your needs are relatively straightforward—or if budget is a limiting factor—Kompyte is worth strong consideration.

Klue

‎Klue was founded in 2015 and is well-regarded as a viable alternative to Crayon. Klue offers a similar feature set to Crayon—although the number of data sources are more limited. Clozd clients who use Klue appreciate its modern user interface and their proactivity in supporting the broader CI community through their sponsorship of the “Compete Network.” Unlike Crayon, however, Klue does not offer interconnectivity with other systems like Clozd or TruVoice. They do, though, offer back-office services to copy and paste win-loss data into battlecards on behalf of their clients. These services require an additional fee and are not automated.

CI Radar

‎CI Radar was founded in 2004 and started as a consulting services firm specializing in competitive intelligence. In recent years, they’ve introduced a growing suite of proprietary software tools—but they’re still primarily a services firm. CI Radar is used by Clozd clients who do not have the internal bandwidth to implement and manage a true CI platform. Their approach and deliverables are customized to each client’s needs, and their team of analysts thoroughly vet each data source manually to ensure a high degree of accuracy.

Where can I go to learn more?

If you haven’t yet, check out review sites like G2 and TrustRadius. The user reviews on these sites are always a helpful starting point. After that, take your research a step further by investigating some of the following additional resources

PMA Pulse

We’ve found that product marketers are common users of competitive intelligence platforms, and PMA is the largest product marketing community in the world. Their annual PMA Pulse survey gathers feedback from their community about preferred products and services. The results of the survey provide helpful feedback about each of the CI vendors we’ve highlighted. You can download a copy of the report.

Gartner

As a well-respected analyst firm, Gartner provides content and resources to help companies evaluate enterprise products and services (such as CI platforms). If you’re a subscriber to Gartner, check out their Market Guide for Competitive & Market Intelligence Tools. While this research is only available to paid subscribers, their Peer Insights review site is publicly viewable. Check out the Peer Insights reviews.