Crayon, a competitive intelligence (CI) company, just announced $6 million in Series A funding for its AI-powered competitive intelligence tool.
Says CMO Ellie Mirman in a recent blog post:
“Crayon started by tackling the challenge of capturing complete information about a company’s every move, and organizing and filtering that data to surface meaningful updates. As a result, we’re now tapping into hundreds of millions of sources programmatically and analyzing tens of thousands of data points per day to identify actionable insights.
In this next phase of Crayon’s development, we’re going deeper to analyze trends, using a combination of human and artificial intelligence, to surface relevant and actionable insights.”
Crayon says the AI tool has increased sales win rates for customers by 50% or more, among other benefits.
In addition to the announcement, Crayon also released its 2019 State of Competitive Intelligence Report, which catalogs responses to key industry questions from more than 1,000 competitive intelligence professionals.
The report focuses on trends in competitive intelligence investment, and has 50+ pages of insights into how competitive intelligence professionals do their work.
Three big highlights jumped out at us as we read through.
A full 87% of respondents said their market has become competitive in the last three years. And 49% said it has become much more competitive.
This is one reason we emphasize the massive competitive advantage provided by artificial intelligence. First movers benefit disproportionately over their competitors. In fact, brands that are AI pioneers often see outsized advantages from their adoption of the technology.
In the pursuit of advantage, firms are using competitive intelligence to improve marketing performance. Enabling sales and informing product strategy are other top use cases for competitive intelligence. According to the report, “many CI professionals are leveraging their efforts to support these top three stakeholders.”
According to the report:
“One of the biggest factors that leads to CI impact? Sharing intel frequently. The more frequently intel is shared, the more likely a business was to see revenue increases as a result of their CI program.”
Respondents who shared intel daily were found to be 84% more likely to see a revenue increase than those who share intel only occasionally or inconsistently.
Want to gain a leg up on the competition?
We recommend you read the full report.