The Ultimate Guide to Competitor Dashboards

What is a Competitor Dashboard?

A competitor dashboard is a live, ever-evolving document that tracks the most information, insights, and key metrics about your competitors. It’s a tool that helps your team stay informed by keep everyone up to date on what’s happening in your industry.

With a well-maintained competitor dashboard, your entire company has a clear view of what’s happening outside—helping you react faster and make informed choices.

Why Do Companies building Software Need a Competitor Dashboard?

Here’s the reality: every team in your company is already doing some level of competitor research.

• Your CEO is scanning for potential partnership opportunities.
• Marketing is analyzing competitor positioning to sharpen their campaigns.
• Sales is using battle cards to understand how to tackle prospects evaluating rival products.

But without a centralized competitor dashboard, all that valuable insight stays siloed, with many people doing the same work twice !

Competitor Monitoring can be your secret weapon

For PMs and PMMs, competitor dashboards can help you :

• Manage Threats: See what are your competitor new products, so you can stay on top of any potential threats.
• Get Inspired: Identify the areas where your competitors excel and adapt those ideas to strengthen your own product offerings.
  Avoid Mistakes: Learn from their failures, so you don’t repeat the same missteps.
• Gain Fast, Actionable Insights: Instead of spending time and resources on research from scratch, tap into competitor learnings and apply those insights quickly to your own strategy.

If your team doesn’t have a competitor dashboard yet, now’s the time to build one!

Creating an effective competitor dashboard is not a one-size-fits-all process—it should be tailored to the specific needs and resources of your company.

For Large Enterprises: With more resources, large companies often benefit from building comprehensive systems for competitor monitoring. This might involve setting up specialized teams, integrating various tools, and leveraging sophisticated custom-built dashboards.

For Small to Medium-Sized Companies: An all-in-one platform can provide significant value by simplifying the process and reducing the workload.

Zoom

PeerPanda: An All-In-One Competitor Analysis Dashboard

If you’re interested in a straightforward, automated solution, check out our 7-step guide: Build the Perfect Competitor Dashboard For your SaaS.
You can return to this guide anytime to learn how to integrate these insights effectively into your product process and keep your dashboard up to date.

Start Small and Improve

Building your dashboard should not be a daunting activity.

• Quality and consistency are much preferable to quantity: start with a few critical metrics and information according to your team's needs and expand over time.

Balance Depth and Breadth

When building your dashboard, it's tempting to add every competitor you find. Unless you have a whole team dedicated to competitor research, it's going to be too much to maintain.

Instead, remember the "80/20 rule":

• Deep-dive on your 1-3 main competitors: Focus your efforts on the ones that are the biggest threat to your business.
• Keep an eye on the indirect ones: Don't ignore smaller players or adjacent markets. Disruptive innovations often come from unexpected places.

Establish a Regular Review Cadence

• Set a consistent schedule: Dedicate time each month to update and review your dashboard. This ensures you're always working with current data.
• Create a ritual: Make this review a part of your team's routine. Consider scheduling it before strategy meetings to inform discussions.

Leverage Technology Effectively

• Automate data collection: Use tools like web scrapers, social media monitors, and news aggregators to streamline information gathering.
• Visualize data: Employ charts, graphs, and heat maps to make trends and comparisons more apparent.
• Consider all-in-one platforms: Integrated platforms like PeerPanda effectively connect all your data sources and use AI to surface insights.

Integrate with Customer Feedback

• Cross-reference with user research: Compare competitor features with your users' needs to identify true opportunities.
• Monitor customer sentiment: Track how users perceive your competitors' moves through social media, reviews, and direct feedback.

Prepare for Different Scenarios

• Conduct "what-if" analyses: Regularly brainstorm potential competitor moves and plan your responses.
• Develop contingency plans: Have strategies ready for major competitive events (e.g., a competitor being acquired or launching a groundbreaking feature).
• Stay agile: Build flexibility into your roadmap to quickly respond to significant market changes.

Continuously Improve Your Process

• Regularly refine your dashboard: Assess which metrics and information sources are providing the most value. Ditch the useless ones.
• Seek feedback: Ask your team and stakeholders how the competitor insights are influencing their work.
• Conduct retrospectives on your reactions to competitor moves and the decisions you've taken. For example, when that competitor launched their new analytics dashboard 3 months ago, we decided not to build our own. What made us take this decision? Was it a good one?

Don't Be Too Paranoid: Focus on Your Own Vision

When looking at competitors, it's easy to worry too much about the gaps in your own product. Remember that you should not react to every competitor's move: it's perfectly fine to wait to see the market's reaction before making significant changes to your roadmap.