The RivalMap Blog - All Articles

Market intelligence simplified - RivalMap Updated

2008-07-29T22:27:00Z

We pushed out another major new release last night that makes sharing and browsing information in RivalMap easier than ever. The goal with this release was to create a more natural workflow for new users and to streamline collaboration for power users. So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive! I'll walk you through the major changes below and also cover some of the smaller features we added that are nice to know about.

Notes, Clippings, and Concerns are now Posts

Notes, clippings, and concerns were combined into a single tab called Posts. We did this so that new users don't need to worry as much about the differences between them and to make it obvious where you should be posting competitor updates and sharing new information. Even though there are fewer tabs, we didn't remove any features. In fact, combining these data types enabled us to add new functionality that many customers requested:

You can now browse all posts with a single tag cloud, or select a sub tab to only show posts with links, concerns, or files
You can flag any post as a concern, even while you are posting links and files
You can share multiple links and files in the same post
The browser button (bookmarklet) lets you upload files and open concerns
You can share links by emailing them to your dropbox address (we extract the links and add them to your post)
You can add titles to your post (but you still don't have to if it's just a short note)
You can share the same link to a webpage multiple times (we will warn you that it has already been posted and show you where)
When sharing links, it's now easier to keep the description/summary of the link separate from your comments about it

Images and files are displayed in Post listings and on profiles

While merging notes, clippings, and concerns we also redesigned the way they are listed. One of the improvements that we made was to show a thumbnail of the first image added to a post in the list view. This is especially useful when you are viewing posts about a competitor because you can quickly see which ones contain interesting pictures or screen-shots of their products. For other file types, we include a link directly to them on the list views with an appropriate icon.

Email digests redesigned to encourage frequent collaboration

The email digests have been completely redesigned to be more engaging and people centric. We show more information from each update and better highlight the names of people making contributions. We also clearly show the discussions that are taking place around important content. If there is too much information to include in a single digest, our algorithm attempts to show the most interesting / relevant content by filtering out information about low threat competitors and prioritizing information that has been starred, commented on, etc. The digests are cleanly formatted so they display well in all major email clients and even on your mobile devices while your on the run.

RivalMap's new email digests ensure that all your important company, industry, and competitor updates are easily read by your coworkers and makes it simple for them to join the discussion.

Changes to the dashboard

There are now colorful icons next to new posts that clearly show if they have links, files, or concerns. We added a new button to the dashboard so you can quickly add a new post and another button so that you can create a profile for a company, product, or customer segment. The dashboard also now shows the open concerns count so that you can jump directly to the most important posts that need to be addressed.

Expanding text fields

Now, as you type new posts and comments the text fields will automatically expand to fit your content. They stop expanding once they reach the size of your browser window. This should make it more pleasing to author longer content within RivalMap.

We made lots of other changes to ensure RivalMap continues to perform well as our customer base grows and make it easier for us to add functionality in the future. This post didn't cover all the smaller changes we made, so you might want to explore next time you log into your account!

Track news inside RivalMap!

2008-06-04T10:21:00Z

Read the press release here.

I'm happy to announce that companies can now track their news inside RivalMap! Every account now has a powerful collaborative feed reader that enables your company to easily find, organize, and share important news about your competitors and your industry. We partnered with NewsGator, the leader in the RSS space, so that we could build our technology on top of their proven enterprise RSS platform.

Setting up news in RivalMap is much easier than with a traditional feed reader because RivalMap automatically finds relevant feeds, like the company and employee blogs of your competitors. Our partnership with NewsGator enables us to also provide comprehensive keyword search feeds that automatically find information posted across the internet in news papers, blogs, discussion forums, twitter messages and more!

Setting up news on your account is easy

Go to a competitor or product profile in your RivalMap account.
Click "Find related feeds" to find news the company produces, or click "Add a new subscription" to add a feed or keyword search directly.
Tag the subscription for easier browsing (e.g. Product Blog, Industry News, Company Mentions, etc)
Go to the news tab and start reading.

News is available to all accounts for no additional charge. All free accounts include a 30-day trial of news. We have also introduced a new Starter Plan with 3 users and news for just $24/month!

You can read more about our new release and partnership with NewsGator in the media coverage below:

Techcrunch - Constant Vigilance! RivalMap Introduces Automatic News Updates

Mashable - RivalMap Teams with NewsGator, So You Don’t Miss a Beat

Venture Chronicles -- RivalSoft and NewsGator Partner on Integrated Content

NewsGator Blog -- Keeping Closer Tabs on the Competition

Screenshots

The overview tab shows you unread news by tags and a preview of featured news:

You can browse news by competitor, product, or label, and to read individual items quickly:

New release of RivalMap launched!

2008-04-11T08:07:00Z

Today we launched a new release of RivalMap. The new release focuses on better organization and presentation of information, and makes it easier to manage profiles on competitors and their products. A lot of these changes were made in anticipation of a very exciting feature launch we'll be announcing in a few weeks - a news engine that automatically tracks information about your competitors and your industry.

Here's a tour of a few of the improvements that are now available:

New dashboard layout

The first major change was to the dashboard. The improved layout makes new and popular information easier to find by focusing more on the content itself than the activities around it. We now put the title and description front and center as opposed to a summary of the activity that occurred. As a result, it's now a lot easier to scan and browse what's new, recently popular, and your own starred items.

It's also easy to identify items that you have not read or have been updated or commented on since you last viewed them. These items now have highlighted icons and bold titles on the Dashboard (and elsewhere as always).

More intuitive navigation in workspaces

The organization of content types in RivalMap has been rearranged. We created a Profiles tab which organizes profiles of Competitors, Products, and optionally Customer Segments. We also moved Concerns out to have its own tab. This organization makes managing profiles on competitors, as well as on your own company, a bit more intuitive than it was before.

Redesigned profiles for competitors and their products

The actual profiles for competitors, products, and customer segments were redesigned as well. The new changes to the profile section make it easier to add information to a profile since you can now add products, concerns, clippings, and notes inline directly to a profile, without being taken to another page. We are also trying to promote the Wiki section more now as an actual wiki page, where multiple people can contribute and organize key information about a competitor (we have examples in the FAQ). The two screen shots below compare the old and new versions of the profile.

Here is what the old profiles used to look like:

Here is a new profile:

Better filtering for Clippings and Notes

We've greatly improved the way Clippings and Notes can be filtered by tags. Before, Clippings and Notes could only be filtered by a tag cloud of a fixed size. Now, you can switch between list and cloud views of tags, and use the slider to control how many tags you want to see (ranging from all tags to only a few of the most popular). You can also now filter clippings and notes by profiles in the same way as labels, whereas before you had to go to a profile directly.

And more...

There are a host of other changes included in the new release. For instance, to fix some issues with very wide matrices that included many competitors or products, we gave the comparison matrix the full width of your browser and allowed it to scroll. We've also added an intro tab for new users, which they can hide at any time. The intro is an nice way of helping new users get started and learn how to contribute to your RivalMap accounts.

We are very excited about all of the new changes, and hope they're useful for you. Let us know what you think, and thanks for your support!

The need for central information repositories

2008-03-18T04:35:00Z

MSNBC posted an article today based on a recent Workplace Productivity Survey, commissioned by LexisNexis. The survey highlights the large amount of time often wasted in the workplace searching for existing information, and sorting through piles of emails. The article sums up some interesting findings of the survey:

62 percent of professionals report that they spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information to find what they need; 68 percent wish they could spend less time organizing information and more time using the information that comes their way.
Workers admit that not being able to lay their hands on the right information at the right time impedes their ability to work efficiently; 85 percent agree that not being able to access the right information at the right time is a huge time-waster.
More than 40 percent of the survey participants indicate an inability to handle future increases in information flow.
While an average workday for white-collar workers is 8.89 hours, the survey finds that on average, 7.89 working hours are used conducting research, attending meetings, and searching for previously created documents.
White-collar professionals spend an average of 2.3 hours daily conducting online research, with one in 10 spending four hours or more on an average day.

A big source of the information overload is email. What started out as a means of personal communication has been forced into becoming the sole means of sharing information in many companies. Rather than putting information in a place the people that find it relevant can access, workers often overuse the ":cc" function and blast out emails to anyone that might be a relevant recipient. The result, of course, is that the email inbox quickly becomes overloaded. To add to the problem, email clients weren't meant for organizing information for an indefinite period of time, so finding information at a later date sent via email can be a big time sink.

To fix the problem, companies need to provide their workers with easy-to-adopt central repositories:

Speak with leadership about creating information repositories. Instead of pushing all information from the source to employees’ inboxes, centralize the information. This way employees know exactly where to go to find the relevant information they need instead of wading through excessive material to determine whether they need it.

We encourage our customers to shift away from using email to communicate competitor or market information , and start centralizing as much as possible. The net result of using something like RivalMap is that the right information can be easily found at the right time, since workers know exactly where to find the information, and since the organization methods are meant for handling information, not personal correspondence, the time saved in searching for info is a lot less than wading through old emails.

In fact, we've got some great features coming in a few weeks that will be huge time-savers, so keep an eye out for the announcement ;).

Better competitor/product organization

2008-01-17T02:08:00Z

We just pushed out a feature update that improves the way competitors and products are organized when using labels.

For those of you who haven't used them yet, labels(tags) are a great way of assigning keywords to competitors and their products so that you can group them for better browsing.

Previously, we displayed the list of labels alphabetically with the count of matching items to the right. However, as the number of labels began to grow, it wasn't easy to recognize those that were most important.

We solved this problem by sorting the list based on the number of matching items, and increasing the size and darkness of the labels appropriately. This lets you more easily visualize the labels that are most relevant.

Here is a screenshot of the new feature:

In this example, the business label has been selected, which produces the filtered view of the competitors shown below:

Profile revision history and change highlighting

2008-01-09T07:57:00Z

Last night we pushed out a new feature to the RivalMap competitor and product profile editors that makes it easier to access revisions and visualize the changes. The goal is to help people in larger teams feel more comfortable adding information to the profiles by making it clear that it is really easy to see what has changed and restore an older version as necessary.

The profiles are meant to be the central place for a team to summarize and analyze a competitor, product, or customer segment. You should be using notes and clippings for research, but as you start to establish hard facts and better understand a competitor, product, or customer segment it is important that you contribute to their profiles so that other team members don't have to read through all the research to understand the most important issues.

Here are some screenshots of the new profile features:

As you can see, we actually highlight the changes in the formatted view of the profiles, something that most commercial wikis do not do well or at all!

Bringing in the new year

2008-01-02T17:48:00Z

We relaxed a bit over the holidays and recharged our batteries, and we hope you had a great holiday. 2007 was a very busy year for RivalSoft, working diligently to get RivalMap out the door. 2008 will be an even bigger year for the company, with a lot of changes already in the pipeline. RivalMap focuses on a core business problem for companies - communicating and organizing needed information about their industry - and as we work closely with our customers, we will be homing in on improving those functions and expanding to solve related problems for a larger set of people within a company.

When we first started thinking about a solution that became RivalMap, the challenge was to build a technology the encompassed a core set of functionality that would improve existing activities within businesses. In 2008, we will add exciting new technology to enable new forms of communication and discovery for our customers.

Competition, innovation, and staying intelligent about your market

2007-12-13T19:25:00Z

Over the course of building RivalMap, we've spoken with hundreds of companies about how they use information about their market to form strategy. Market intelligence is the the practice of maintaining an awareness of the market segments in which a company currently or wishes to participate. However, it shouldn't be treated as a formal practice only involving the marketing team. It's being intelligent about your market, and having an awareness of the external variables that impact your company. If you're aware of what your customers want and who competes for those customers, you've done market intelligence. How companies makes use of that kind of information can have a big impact on their success.

Formal definitions of market intelligence break it into four areas: competitors, products, markets, and customers. Having the best information and analysis in all four areas gives your company the ability to make the right decisions. If you don't focus on all areas, you may be too close to the trees to see the forest. If Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, was right in saying strategy is all about resource allocation, setting up a process for maintaining solid market intelligence will greatly influence both the short and long term success of a company. The market variables differ for every industry, but the concept is the same.

We often hear from new startups that obsessing over competitors hinders innovation, but this usually comes from a misperception of the purpose of competitor research and market intelligence. Companies that form strategy based solely on the activity of their competitors are fighting an uphill battle, and will either be constantly playing catch-up, or worrying about being caught. Innovation lies at the core of being an entrepreneur, and the concept of researching an idea before going full speed into creating it never seems attractive. However, starting a business without market intelligence is running blind, and the business risks being hit or miss. Startups can fail for a lot of reasons, but aside from lack of resources, failure can stem from losing market share to competitors, building a solution that doesn't address a real problem, launching in the wrong market, or not knowing the customer. Today more than ever, the short product cycles and rapid development of technology make maintaining an awareness of the market even more crucial, but it can be hard to organize the information and get meaning from it. "See no evil, hear no evil" might work, but what's the risk?

Established companies, especially larger enterprises, face different challenges in remaining globally intelligent about their market. The marketing teams may have an excellent grasp on market intelligence, but are missing the technology foundation to store, organize, and deliver the information to the people that can benefit from it. Market intelligence touches on all aspects of a company. Good product managers build on customer needs, and need to understand what it takes to build loyalty. Sales teams depend on competitive knowledge to win sales, and risk losing when they aren't up to speed on the market. More important than market intelligence being delivered to the workers, it's crucial for a large company to have a way to pull together the knowledge of their workers. But with many different teams working in parallel and a dynamic market with many variables, companies may find their market intelligence practices treat the market like it's in a state of inertia. The marketing team sends processed information out via email, occasionally reports are created, but the process is not dynamic.

Our theory is that companies of all sizes, in all industries, can benefit from a technology that makes their market intelligence more fluid and organized. We'd love to hear how your company currently looks at the market.

Welcome to RivalMap

2007-12-10T09:16:00Z

After a very well-received private beta, we are pleased to launch RivalMap and announce it publicly. We were able to work with some great thinkers at a variety of companies during the beta, and were thrilled to find the fundamentals of RivalMap solved pain points in many industries. We're looking forward to hearing what a much bigger audience has to say, and providing a powerful solution for all companies, startups and global enterprises alike.

The team here at RivalSoft is very excited to be launching the application. We have a lot more in the works for RivalMap, which we'll talk about in the near future. We'll be using this blog to post product updates, but also to discuss all of our experiences and insights on business, competition, technology, and the relationships between them. We hope you'll join us.