Competitive intelligence analysis

Turn raw market intelligence into a structured competitive briefing ready for your next strategy meeting.

Tracking competitors manually means scrolling through press releases, product updates, and news articles — then guessing what it means for your roadmap. This prompt takes your raw intelligence inputs and returns a structured briefing: emerging strengths, market shifts, threat levels, opportunities, and specific recommendations. Just fill in 5 inputs and get a team-ready brief in seconds.

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How the prompt works

The system prompt sets the LLM up as a competitive intelligence analyst and requires five specific sections in every response. Without that structure, models return a general industry summary instead of a briefing scoped to your product and concerns. The user prompt takes five variables — product category, news content, competitor names, your current positioning, and strategic concerns — so the output is always relevant to your actual competitive context.

System prompt

Sets the LLM’s role and defines the five sections it must always include in the output.

You are an expert Competitive Intelligence Analyst specialising in SaaS market analysis. Your task is to analyse market intelligence data and extract strategic insights for product positioning and feature development.

From the provided sources, deliver:

1. Emerging Competitor Strengths: New capabilities, partnerships, or strategic advantages competitors are developing.
2. Market Shifts and Trends: Industry movements, customer behaviour changes, and technology adoption patterns.
3. Threat Assessment: Immediate competitive risks and their potential impact on market position.
4. Strategic Opportunities: Market gaps and positioning opportunities revealed by competitor moves.
5. Actionable Recommendations: Specific product feature pivots or strategic responses to consider.

Present findings in concise bullet points optimised for executive strategy meetings. Focus on actionable intelligence that can drive immediate product decisions.

User prompt

Five variables that give the model the context it needs to return insights specific to your competitive situation.

Analyse the competitive landscape for {{product_category}} based on the following intelligence:

- News articles and announcements: {{news_content}}
- Competitor focus: {{competitor_names}}
- Our product positioning: {{current_positioning}}
- Strategic concerns: {{specific_focus_areas}}

Sample output: Project management SaaS

Competitive intelligence: Project management SaaS market

Emerging competitor strengths

• Asana: AI-powered task prioritisation positions them ahead in the automation race
• Monday.com: TimeSync acquisition strengthens time tracking, targeting the consulting market
• Notion: Collaborative whiteboards expand beyond docs into visual project planning
• Slack: Advanced workflow automation threatens standalone project tools
• Microsoft Project: Real-time collaboration upgrades challenge the market with enterprise integration advantage

Market shifts and trends

• AI integration is accelerating — the market is moving toward intelligent task management and predictive analytics
• All-in-one platform consolidation — customers prefer fewer tools with broader capabilities
• Visual collaboration is growing — demand for whiteboarding and visual project planning is increasing
• Time tracking is becoming table stakes — focus on productivity measurement and billing automation is rising

Threat assessment

• High: Asana’s AI features may outpace our automation capabilities
• Medium: Monday.com’s time tracking strength challenges our reporting advantage
• Medium: Notion’s expansion into visual tools threatens our collaboration positioning
• Low: Microsoft’s enterprise focus leaves a mid-market gap we can exploit

Strategic opportunities

• AI gap: Most competitors focus on task automation; opportunity exists for AI-powered project insights
• Mid-market sweet spot: Enterprise players moving upmarket are leaving mid-market underserved
• Reporting differentiation: Our reporting strength can become an advanced analytics and dashboard play
• Integration over build: Partner with time tracking tools rather than build in-house; focus on core strengths

Actionable recommendations

• Immediate: Accelerate AI roadmap, prioritise intelligent project insights over task automation
• Q1 priority: Enhance visual collaboration features to match Notion’s whiteboard capability
• Strategic: Consider a time tracking partnership or acquisition to compete with Monday.com
• Positioning: Double down on mid-market while competitors chase enterprise deals
• Feature pivot: Transform reporting advantage into a predictive project analytics platform

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Import into Adaline

This prompt comes with a ready-to-import Adaline project file. It includes the prompt, dataset, and evaluators, all pre-configured.

Download & import into Adaline

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Evaluations and dataset

Each prompt in the library ships with a dataset and evaluators so you can test quality before deploying.

Evaluators

Two failure modes, three evaluators: one for completeness, one for strategic relevance, one for length.

Analysis completeness

Checks that all five required sections are present in every output.

Goal: The briefing must include all five required output sections.

Checks:
- Emerging Competitor Strengths with specific capabilities or moves is present
- Market Shifts and Trends with at least three distinct patterns is present
- Threat Assessment with severity levels (High/Medium/Low) is present
- Strategic Opportunities tied to competitor moves are present
- Actionable Recommendations with specific next steps are present

Scoring guidance:
- 1: Missing 3 or more required sections.
- 2: Missing 2 required sections.
- 3: All sections present but some are superficial or lack detail.
- 4: All sections present with good detail; minor gaps.
- 5: All sections fully present, well-structured, and specific.

Strategic relevance

Checks that insights are specific to the provided competitors and concerns, not generic market commentary.

Goal: The briefing must be specific to the provided competitors, positioning, and strategic concerns — not generic industry commentary.

Checks:
- Each named competitor appears in the analysis with specific moves or capabilities cited
- Threat levels reflect the stated current positioning, not general market risk
- Opportunities are tied directly to gaps revealed by the provided news and competitor moves
- Recommendations address the stated strategic concerns specifically
- No section could apply equally to a different product category or competitor set

Scoring guidance:
- 1: Generic output — could apply to any product in any category.
- 2: Some specific references but most content is generic commentary.
- 3: Adequately specific; most insights tie back to the provided inputs.
- 4: Mostly specific; minor areas of generic commentary.
- 5: Fully specific — every insight maps directly to the provided competitors, positioning, and concerns.

Response length

Guards against bloated output. A competitive brief should be scannable in under two minutes.

Rule: Output must be less than 800 tokens.

A good competitive brief is tight and focused. If it’s too long, teams won’t read it before the meeting.

Dataset

Four product categories across different markets — each row maps directly to the five variables in the user prompt.

Product category	News and announcements	Competitor focus	Our positioning	Strategic concerns
Project management SaaS	”Asana launches AI task prioritisation… Monday.com acquires TimeSync… Notion adds collaborative whiteboards… Slack integrates advanced workflow automation… Microsoft Project adds real-time collaboration…”	Asana, Monday.com, Notion, Slack, Microsoft Project	Mid-market project management with strong reporting capabilities	AI integration, team collaboration features, enterprise expansion
CRM and sales tooling	”Salesforce launches Einstein GPT for sales emails… HubSpot adds AI deal scoring… Pipedrive acquires a lead enrichment startup… Close releases power dialler update… Freshsales introduces auto-sequence builder…”	Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Close, Freshsales	SMB-focused CRM with fast onboarding and clean UX	AI-assisted selling, pipeline automation, integration depth with outbound tools
HR and people management	”Workday adds continuous performance tracking… Rippling expands into IT management… Lattice launches AI-generated review summaries… BambooHR adds compensation benchmarking… Culture Amp releases predictive attrition model…”	Workday, Rippling, Lattice, BambooHR, Culture Amp	Mid-market HR platform focused on performance and engagement	AI in performance reviews, platform consolidation, attrition prediction
DevOps and developer tooling	”GitHub Copilot adds PR review automation… GitLab launches AI security scanning… Datadog acquires a log management startup… HashiCorp moves Terraform to BSL licence… CircleCI announces self-hosted runner improvements…”	GitHub, GitLab, Datadog, HashiCorp, CircleCI	CI/CD platform focused on speed and developer experience	AI-assisted code review, licence risk from HashiCorp, observability integration