Competitive Analysis Service Provides Tech Companies With Roadmap for Successful Product Roll-Out and Development
 
Business analytics promotes sound market positioning and product development while identifying immediate and ongoing sales opportunities 

BackBone's Fast-Track Analytics enables technology companies to identify, track and position against competitors and "stealth competitors"-- those posing potential near term, as yet unforseen, challenges.  An outgrowth of BBI's successful Startup 1.0 program (a business plan service that includes high-end competitive analysis and marketing programs), the competitive analysis service provides tech companies with a critical foundation for successful marketing and sales strategies.   

"All too often, technology companies fail to maximize their technology due to an incomplete analysis of the market--or an analysis that soon becomes outstripped by competitors whose strategies and product offerings change from one week to the next," says Charles Epstein, President of BackBone Inc. "Our program helps prepare high-tech companies for immediate and looming challenges, some that may still be beyond the horizon. It provides a clear, third-party view of the competitive landscape and identifies technical and marketing opportunities that can be exploited."

BBI's Fast Track Analytics integrates the following components*:

• Competitive Landscape: a matrix listing chief competitors, including major products, feature sets, pricing models, schedules of new releases, markets targeted
  
  
• Over the Horizon: a listing of near-term or potential competitors
  
  
• Critical Consensus: snapshots of reviews to gauge critical perception of products
  
  
• Differentiators: a head-to-head comparison of feature sets
  
  
• Strategic Positioning: a list that highlights marketing strategies and opportunities that can be exploited.

*The service can also be made available on a quarterly subscription basis to facilitate ongoing market tracking.

"A sales program is only as sound--and as successful--as your 'market intelligence,' which is a measure of how well you know and understand your chief competitors, their technical differentiators, positioning and growth strategies," said Steven Morgan, President of PeopleComm, Inc., a Long Island based firm specializing in sales force development for IT companies. "We are constantly surprised by how few companies devote the resources required to reveal the opportunities their sales force needs to be successful.  Those that do seldom revisit and update their initial findings, resulting in outdated strategies and flat  sales.  Fast Track Analytics is an indispensable tool that will further our ability to build dynamic, focused sales teams for our clients."   

The service will be made available directly to high tech companies, entrepreneurs and business start-ups, and through "OEM" partnerships with investment and Venture Capital funds, law firms and accounting firms with technology practices.