From Valona’s Experts & Analysts

Competitive & market intelligence resources

Practical guidance, research and analysis from Valona’s intelligence experts. Learn how to build a stronger intelligence practice, understand what’s changing in your markets and make better use of intelligence in strategic decisions.

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See what the best intelligence teams do differently

Explore competitive intelligence best practices for building a function that stays focused on the right priorities, delivers intelligence people can use and earns a stronger role in decision-making.

Starting a competitive intelligence function

Start with the decisions your intelligence needs to support, then define your stakeholders, priorities, processes, tools and information sources.

Read the 5 first steps
Building a competitive intelligence function

Strong competitive intelligence programs develop across six dimensions: focus, process, deliverables, organization, tools and culture.

Build a stronger CI program
Assess your intelligence maturity

Assess your intelligence function across the practices that distinguish informal, basic, intermediate, advanced and world-class intelligence programs.

Take the assessment
Measure the impact of intelligence

Measure intelligence by the decisions it influences and the business value it helps create — not simply by the volume of reports, alerts or outputs produced.

Learn how to measure impact
Benchmark your intelligence function

Valona has tracked how competitive and market intelligence functions operate and evolve for 20 years. See what the latest benchmark reveals about today’s highest-performing teams.

Explore the latest benchmark
Competitive intelligence best practices

Effective competitive intelligence starts with the decisions that matter and builds the focus, processes, deliverables, organization, tools and culture needed to support them.

See intelligence best practices

Competitive intelligence in practice

Competitive intelligence should do more than tell you what your competitors are doing. Use it to understand where they’re heading, how your position is changing and what those shifts could mean for your next move.

Build competitor profiles that answer the right questions

The best competitor profiles help you see where a competitor is heading, not just where they’ve been. Use five questions to connect their activity, performance and strategy to the decisions your business needs to make.

Build better competitive profiles
Benchmark your competitive position

Benchmarking helps you see where competitors are gaining or losing ground, how your position compares and which differences are significant enough to inform your next move.

Competitor benchmarking playbook
Understand competitor financial performance

Financial performance can reveal more than who is growing fastest. Learn how to compare the KPIs that show where competitors are performing well, where they are under pressure and what they may have capacity to do next.

Understand competitor financials

How is AI changing competitive & market intelligence?

AI has made it faster than ever to find, synthesize and analyze information. But faster answers don’t automatically make decisions easier. Explore what AI changes about intelligence, where human judgment still matters and what it takes to build AI on intelligence you can trust.

Global Intelligence Report: AI Edition

New research into how competitive and market intelligence teams are adopting AI, where it is creating value and how the role of intelligence is changing as a result.

Coming soon
AI made us smarter. Why is it still so hard to make decisions?

AI has made information and analysis faster, but the distance between seeing change and acting on it remains. Explore what it takes to connect intelligence across the business and turn faster insight into faster decisions.

Explore AI and decision-making
AI for competitive intelligence: what humans still do better

AI brings speed and scale to competitive intelligence. Human expertise remains critical for asking the right questions, applying business context and deciding what intelligence means for the decisions ahead.

Explore AI + human intelligence
What is intelligence-grade AI?

Intelligence-grade AI combines AI capabilities with relevant, trusted information and traceability, helping teams move faster without losing confidence in the intelligence behind a decision.

Explore intelligence-grade AI
What does agentic AI mean for competitive intelligence?

Agentic AI could change how intelligence teams connect and act on developments across markets, competitors and business priorities. See what that means for the future of competitive intelligence.

Watch the webinar
Agentic AI for competitive & market intelligence

As AI makes individual research easier, the opportunity for CMI is bigger than producing answers faster. Explore how agentic AI can help build a continuous intelligence capability — and where human judgment remains essential.

Read the agentic AI guide

Valona vs Klue

Klue is built primarily for competitive enablement and helping sales teams compete in deals. Valona supports broader competitive and market intelligence across strategy, product, commercial and other business teams.

Valona vs AlphaSense

AlphaSense is strongest in search-led financial and document research. Valona is built for continuous market and competitive intelligence, helping teams track change across markets and competitors and understand what it means for the business.

Valona vs Comintelli

Comintelli offers a flexible intelligence platform that teams configure around their own sources and workflows. Valona provides a more integrated approach, with global source coverage, continuous monitoring and AI-driven analysis built for enterprise-wide intelligence programs.

Choosing a competitive & market intelligence platform?

The right intelligence platform depends on what you need it to help your organization do. Understand your options, build the case for investment, evaluate potential solutions and see how independent analysts assess the market.

Understand the competitive intelligence platform landscape

Competitive intelligence tools are built for different jobs. Understand the main platform categories, where they fit within an intelligence stack and which capabilities match the way your organization uses intelligence.

Explore the intelligence platform landscape
Build the business case for a CI platform

The strongest business cases connect investment in intelligence to problems the organization can already see and measure. Learn which internal data can help quantify the cost of your current approach.

Build your business case
Make the case internally

Turn the need for better intelligence into a structured business case, with a practical framework for defining the problem, calculating value, mapping stakeholders and presenting the investment.

Get the business case framework
Evaluate competitive & market intelligence platforms

Define what your organization actually needs before evaluating vendors, from intelligence priorities and source coverage to AI, workflows, integrations, security and support.

Get the buyer’s guide
The Forrester Wave™

Forrester named Valona a Strong Performer in its 2026 evaluation, highlighting its broad intelligence and analytics, international reach, and deep expertise in manufacturing-centric and complex industries.

See the overview
Gartner® Magic Quadrant™

Valona has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Competitive and Market Intelligence Platforms.

Explore Gartner’s recognition