Having gathered tools and techniques, the next step is to structure your CI program to organize your CI activities.
In this section, we'll explore how to develop a plan, integrate CI into your daily workflow, and share your insights.
Start With a Simple Plan
Creating a structured plan for your CI activities provides a roadmap that guides your efforts and keeps you focused on your objectives.
Set Goals, Timelines and Milestones
Identify immediate tasks, such as setting up monitoring tools or compiling competitor profiles. Some projects will require implementing specific tools or training people. Do this early to get bandwidth from other teams if needed.
Assign Roles and Responsibilities
If you’re solo, be honest with yourself about how much time you can realistically give CI. Set a weekly recurring calendar block and guard it.
If you’ve got others onboard (lucky you), get clear on who’s doing what:
- Sales shares intel from customer calls
- Product marketing owns battlecards or positioning updates
- Product managers flag competitor features or roadmap shifts
- CS surfaces customer feedback or churn reasons
Just make sure people know CI isn’t someone else’s job.
Build a Rhythm That Doesn’t Burn You Out
Consistency is key. Making CI a seamless part of your routine ensures that it does not become something "extra”, that you only do when you have free time (you never have).
Here’s a sample cadence to steal:
- Weekly (5–10 min): Check alerts, skim competitor news, log anything urgent.
- Monthly (30 min): Review changes, update key profiles, flag anything useful for sales or product.
- Quarterly (1 hr): Pull together a simple digest for leadership. What changed? What matters? What might impact us?
Pro tip: Sync your CI updates with existing rituals - Monday standups, monthly OKR reviews, launch planning sessions. If you try to run it separately, it’ll feel optional.
Document and Share Insights
What will be your source of truth on competitor data? How will you share important news? How will you ensure that salespeople effectively use insights on competitors to prepare their customer calls?
Gathering information is important, but it’s useless without the proper communication channels in place.
Create a single source of truth for competitor information
The best intel in the world is useless if no one knows where to find it.
So pick a spot. Name it clearly. Stick to it.
Could be:
- A “Competitive Intel” hub in Notion
- A Slack channel with a pinned battlecard link
- A PeerPanda workspace
What matters most: keep it clean, current, and easy to navigate.
And when something becomes outdated? Archive or delete it. Outdated info kills trust faster than no info at all.
Share Insights with your Company
When sharing insights, less is more. You don’t need to write formal reports every week. In fact, please don’t.
When you find something useful:
- Summarize it in plain English
- Add one sentence about why it matters
- Tag the people who care
Setup Communication Channels
Getting creative in your communication is a great way to draw engagement and attention to your CI program. Here are some ideas that you can implement in your company:
- Small CI Focus in Company Meetings: Present findings during team meetings or company all-hands.
- Setup a dedicated Slack or Teams Channel: Where everyone can share news and insights
- Weekly or Monthly Newsletters: Share CI highlights with relevant teams.
- Breaking News Updates: Special reports for when a competitor does something big
- Sales Battlecards: Find ways to incorporate insights on competitor weak points
Encourage Feedback and Engagement
CI is a deeply collaborative activity. Encourage team members to provide feedback on CI reports and share their perspectives. Sales, Product and even Customer Success can contribute their side of the story.
Also, take the time to regularly evaluate how well your CI activities meet the needs of your company, and make changes to your documentation and communication methods based on feedback.