Competitor Profile

Definition

A competitor profile is the business (re)engineering requirements work product that documents a single competitor of the customer organization.

Objectives

The typical objectives of a competitor profile are to:

• Document a single competitor.
• Provide an input for market analysis.

Benefits

The typical benefits of a competitor profile are:

• One cannot successfully reengineer a business without understanding its competitors.

Contents

The typical contents of a competitor profile are:

• Competitor Profile:
  • Description
  • Applications
  • Business Analysis
  • Brand Analysis
  • Organizational Analysis
  • Technology Analysis
  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses
• Conclusion
• Appendices:
  • Major Issues
  • TBDs
  • Assumptions

Stakeholders

The typical stakeholders of a competitor profile are:

• Producers:
  • Business Strategy Team
• Evaluators:
  • Strategy Inspection Team
  • Customer Representative, which inspects the content for correctness.
• Approvers:
  • Technical Leader
• Maintainers:
  • Business Strategy Team
• Users:
  • Business Strategy Team, uses the market analysis to:
    • Develop the market analysis.
    • Architect the business.

Phases

A competitor profile is typically produced during the following phases:

• Business Strategy: Completed
• Business Optimization: Maintained
• Initiation: Not Applicable
• Construction: Not Applicable
• Delivery: Not Applicable
• Usage: Not Applicable
• Retirement: Not Applicable

Preconditions

A competitor profile can be started if the following preconditions hold:

• The initiation phase is started.
• The business strategy team has been staffed and trained in market analysis.

Inputs

The typical inputs to a competitor profile include:

• Documentation:
  • Competitor marketing documents
  • Industry analyst reports
  • Customer Analysis
  • Technology Analysis
• Stakeholders:
  • Marketplace Domain Experts
  • Competitor Domain Experts

• This informal document is developed incrementally and iteratively in parallel with other documents:
  • Competitor Profiles of other competing business enterprises.
  • Market Analysis, which summarizes and organizes the information in the competitor profiles.
• This is a separate working document for the sake of ease of use and parallel requirements engineering. It is optional in that its contents could be directly inserted into the market analysis document or into a requirements management tool that stores requirements information and thus enables the automatic production of the market analysis document (or even individual competitor profiles if needed).
• This is an informal document that need not be separately maintained once its contents are incorporated into the market analysis.
• Evaluation and approval may be:
  • Done on a group basis.
  • Optional and instead handled during the evaluation and approval of the associated market analysis document.
• This document should typically produced during the business strategy phase of a business reengineering project However, it may also be either created or updated during the initiation phase of an application development project.

A competitor profile is typically constrained by the following conventions:

• Content and Format Standard
• MS Word Template
• XML DTD
• Inspection Checklist

Examples

• Example Competitor Profile