Competitive Intelligence Brief Template

Competitive intelligence brief — DataNova (Enterprise Analytics)


Brief Owner
SPSophie Petit
Last Reviewed
14/02/2026
Industry Segment
Enterprise SaaS
Confidence Level
Verified

🏢 Company overview

DataNova — Series C (€45M, 2024), 280 employees, headquartered in Amsterdam. Targets mid-market and enterprise analytics teams in EMEA. Revenue estimated at €28M ARR (2025). Expanded into France and DACH in Q3 2025. Primary positioning: "Self-service analytics for non-technical teams."

📊 Product comparison

CapabilityOur ProductDataNova
Knowledge searchAI-powered semantic searchKeyword search only
Template builderCustom fields + content blocksFixed report layouts
Enterprise SSOSAML + SCIM includedSAML only (Enterprise tier)

🎯 Win/loss patterns

ScenarioOutcomeKey Factors
Enterprise KM consolidationWinStronger template customisation and AI search
Mid-market analytics-first buyerLossDataNova's native dashboards appeal to data teams

💬 Recommended responses

  • "DataNova has better dashboards" — Acknowledge their reporting strength. Redirect: "Dashboards show what happened; our platform captures why it happened and what to do next."
  • "DataNova is cheaper" — Their entry price is lower but excludes SSO and advanced permissions. Compare total cost at enterprise scale.
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Give sales, marketing, and strategy teams a structured format for recording and sharing competitive intelligence. This template captures competitor positioning, product changes, pricing moves, and win/loss patterns — so the organisation responds to competitive threats with facts rather than assumptions.

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What is a competitive intelligence brief?

A competitive intelligence brief is a structured document that captures and organises information about a competitor’s strategy, product, pricing, and market behaviour. It gives sales, marketing, and leadership teams a shared reference for understanding competitive threats and identifying opportunities to differentiate.

Competitive intelligence often stays informal — scattered across Slack messages, sales call notes, and individual memories. When a prospect asks how you compare to a competitor, each rep gives a different answer. A structured brief solves this by creating a single, maintained source of competitive truth. The brief documents what the competitor does, how they position themselves, where they win, and where they struggle — so every team member works from the same factual foundation.

Who should use this template?

This template is for teams that need to track and act on competitive information:

  • Sales Managers — equip reps with accurate competitor positioning and objection responses for deals involving known competitors
  • Product Marketers — maintain competitive positioning documents and update battle cards when competitors make product or pricing changes
  • Strategy Directors — synthesise competitive moves into strategic recommendations for leadership and product roadmap planning
  • Business Development Managers — identify competitive gaps and partnership opportunities based on documented market intelligence

What’s included in this template?

The template has two parts: structured metadata fields and the intelligence body.

Metadata fields classify each brief:

  • Competitor name and website
  • Industry segment and market position
  • Brief owner and last reviewed date
  • Confidence level (verified, partially verified, unverified)

Intelligence body organises the competitive analysis:

  • Company overview — size, funding, geography, target market, and recent trajectory
  • Product comparison — feature-by-feature comparison against your offering with evidence
  • Positioning and messaging — how the competitor describes themselves, their key claims, and differentiation angles
  • Pricing and packaging — known pricing, packaging tiers, and discount patterns observed in deals
  • Win/loss patterns — scenarios where you win or lose against this competitor, with contributing factors
  • Recommended responses — talking points and objection handlers for sales conversations

How to create and customise this template in Elium

  1. Open the Template Builder — Go to your profile menu and select the Template Builder tab, or click “+ Create” and choose “Create a new template”.
  2. Set the scope — Choose an icon, enable the template, and decide whether it applies platform-wide or to specific spaces (e.g. Sales Intelligence or Competitive Analysis).
  3. Add structured fields — Click “Field” to add metadata: text fields for competitor name and website, a tag field for industry segment, a user field for brief owner, a date field for last reviewed, and a tag field for confidence level (pre-populate with “Verified”, “Partially Verified”, “Unverified”). Mark competitor name and brief owner as mandatory.
  4. Build the intelligence structure — Use the “+” button to add content blocks: a text block for company overview, a table block for product comparison (columns: capability, your product, competitor, evidence source), text blocks for positioning and pricing intelligence, a table block for win/loss patterns (columns: scenario, outcome, contributing factors), and a text block for recommended responses.
  5. Preview and save — Review the template layout, then save. Sales and marketing teams can now select it when documenting competitive intelligence, and you can apply it to existing content in bulk.

How AI helps you create and use this template

Capture faster. Paste competitor press releases, product pages, and deal notes into Elium’s AI. It extracts the key facts — product changes, pricing signals, and positioning shifts — and organises them into the brief structure so the analyst reviews and supplements rather than compiling manually.

Retrieve smarter. A sales rep asks Elium’s AI: “How does CompetitorX position their enterprise plan against us?” The AI returns the specific positioning claims, known pricing, and recommended talk tracks from the latest brief — giving the rep accurate ammunition before the call.

Why teams use Elium for competitive intelligence

Competitive intelligence has a shelf life. A battle card that is six months old can do more damage than no battle card at all — reps quote outdated pricing, miss new features, or use positioning that the competitor has already countered. The value of competitive intelligence depends on it being current, accessible, and trusted. Elium makes this possible: structured templates ensure every brief covers the same ground, version history shows what changed and when, and search lets any team member find the latest intelligence in seconds rather than asking the person who “usually handles” that competitor.

Frequently asked questions

A competitive intelligence brief is a structured document that captures a competitor’s strategy, product capabilities, pricing, and market positioning. Without one, sales teams rely on outdated information and personal impressions, leading to inconsistent messaging and lost deals when competitors change their approach.
A complete brief includes competitor metadata and confidence indicators, a detailed company overview, a feature-by-feature product comparison with evidence sources, positioning and messaging analysis, pricing and packaging intelligence, documented win/loss patterns with contributing factors, and specific recommended responses for sales conversations.
Standardised briefs give every rep the same accurate, current information about competitors. They reduce preparation time before competitive deals, ensure consistent messaging across the entire sales team, and create an auditable record of competitive changes that informs both product roadmap and strategy decisions.
Start with verified facts from public sources — product pages, press releases, pricing pages. Layer in field intelligence from sales conversations and deal reviews. Separate facts from speculation using confidence labels. Update the brief after every significant competitive encounter or product change.
A competitive intelligence brief is a comprehensive reference document covering all aspects of a competitor. A battle card is a condensed, deal-ready summary designed for quick reference during sales conversations. The brief is the source; the battle card is a derivative designed for speed during active selling.

Related reading: Read more on our blog