The Competition
We wish to be aware of other efforts to develop strategic planning product and services similar to ours. It is important to know of competitive challenges to our plans so that we can make adjustments. We also can learn from what our competitors are doing.
Corporations performing their own strategic planning. The competition for the product we are proposing lies in three areas. The first are the organizations that currently are performing strategic planning in the traditional manner. The most obvious are all the businesses that carry out their own strategic planning activities … collecting as much data as they can, holding a formal once-a-year planning session, and making the wisest strategic decisions they possibly can. What each of them actually does varies considerably. Some of them invest substantial resources in planning strategy and do a competent job of it. A large percentage of companies make an average effort and achieve mediocre results. A small group simply go through the motions and accomplish little. There are many businesses practicing no significant strategic planning at all.
There are no good research data on the numbers of organizations engaged in serious strategic planning, the details of their strategic planning systems and activities, and the effectiveness of those activities. Our task is to develop and market a product that
- persuades ambitious, successful corporate leaders that they can take their strategy-making to an even higher level through new tools and technologies
- shows the average corporation that it can begin practicing a modern form of strategic planning that will give it a dramatic edge over its competitors
- helps those businesses with little or no previous commitment to strategic planning see that a modest investment in AI technology can give them a meaningful, productive planning function
In all these cases, we intend to turn these competitors into customers. This should not be difficult if we can demonstrate that our product is superior to what they are currently doing.
Management consultants giving advice on strategic planning. That will not be our goal with the second class of rivals – the variety of management consultants (individuals and firms) that advise numerous businesses on planning strategy. They range from large well-known firms like the Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, and McKinsey & Company, dozens of more medium-size consulting groups, and hundreds of single independent consultants. Their services range from the very specific, like preparing a company-wide market segment analysis or recommending grounds for a product differentiation strategy, to literally preparing a complete strategic plan for presentation to management for its approval and implementation. These firms are effectively replicating the tasks in the traditional strategic planning process, providing the resources and expertise that their corporate customers may lack. They are not really improving the process.
We are a threat to these strategy consultants. Our products will perform the same basic management functions, but we will do them faster and more accurately, with more complete scientific evidence, allow more management control, produce more fine-grained recommendations, and ensure thorough implementation. This is what we will explain to the consultants’ clients. This is why, steadily and at an accelerating pace, they will switch to us.
Once they see that their customers are migrating to our more capable products, the larger consulting firms, the better endowed ones, will try to engineer similar AI-driven planning tools. We will successfully resist them by moving faster, much faster, and producing superior algorithms, more engaging interfaces, and exceptional competitive outcomes for our customers.
Vendors of AI & ML products for marketing and financial management
The third group of potential competitors are the two dozen or so small companies that are using computer technologies, including AI and ML, to automate particular activities in Finance and Marketing. This is a concise review of the entities in those two fields.
AI in Marketing
An article from the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute described the “7 Top Marketing and Sales Companies Using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning” that “are using AI to transform how marketing and sales pros work”. This suggests that the companies are focused on improving the tactical job activities of individual marketing employees, rather than using AI to optimize the long-range, business-wide accomplishments of their marketing efforts. The seven companies were reviewed this way.
Amplero – The company’s AI marketing platform is used to test marketing approaches at scale, in order to optimize customer interactions and maximize lifetime value.
Conversica – This company sells an automated sales assistant that “engages, qualifies and follows-up with sales leads via human-like, two-way email conversations.”
Dynamic Yield – This company employs an advanced machine learning engine to build “real-time customer segments” that can be used to customize user experiences and recommendations, as well as craft one-to-one messaging. The result is a full suite of AI-powered personalization and engagement solutions that work throughout the customer journey.
Gong – This company uses artificial intelligence to automatically record, transcribe and analyze all “sales calls, demos, and meetings so sales teams can scale the effectiveness of their sales conversations.”
Xant – (formerly InsideSales.com) The firm’s “predictive and prescriptive self-learning engine” works to improve sales rep performance and increase personalization with predictive sales communications and forecasting.
Narrative Science – The company uses natural language generation to transform data into written narratives. These communications “provide complete transparency into how analytic decisions are made.”
Reflektion – This company uses AI and machine learning in its “predictive analytics platform” to increase revenue, conversions and pageviews. The company’s “patented algorithms enable modeling of millions of users every day and predict with high confidence what customers will do next.” The platform can do this across landing pages, emails and product recommendations.
The corporate missions of none of these companies significantly overlap with the functions of our products.
AI in Finance
There is a large group of software-based products and services that go under the label of Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A). These solutions support a business’s budgeting, planning and forecasting efforts. Many also supplement the office’s budgeting and planning process with modeling, collaboration analytics, and performance-reporting capabilities, to increase its ability to manage performance by linking corporate strategy and execution.
In a paper entitled “The Future of Financial Planning and Analysis”, the Gartner organization argued that, to modernize their FP&A efforts, businesses must “prepare for the adoption of new artificial intelligence-based analytic and process automation technologies”, and “integrate additional operational planning processes, data and line-of-business users into financial planning processes”. It complained that much financial planning “relegates analytics to simple reports and variance analysis and obscures operational meaning and actionability”. The paper claimed that “in the near future, AI capabilities will be embedded within FP&A solutions”, but that “currently, the use of AI techniques is rare for FP&A”.
In general, the Finance function is still focused on business activities that produce only financial results, that are measured in dollar terms, that are operational and short-term in nature, and that are analyzed and manipulated manually. Speculations on future FP&A do not holistically encompass a wide variety of internal and external factors (that may or may not be measurable in monetary terms), do not attempt to involve (incorporate data from) every area and function of the business, do not take a strategic perspective on success for the business, and are not automated to any significant degree. They do not propose to develop a comprehensive, fully integrated, organization-wide, future-oriented system of planning.
Gartner also prepares an annual Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions. This report is concerned primarily with evaluating individual vendors of cloud-based software FP&A solutions. The most recent report evaluated the following vendors and their services: Adaptive Insights, Anaplan, BOARD International, CCH Tagetik, Host Analytics, IBM, Jedox, Kaufman Hall (Axiom Software), Kepion, Longview, OneStream Software, Oracle, Prophix, SAP, Vena Solutions, and Workiva.
“These processes typically employ scorecards and strategy maps to correlate objectives with one another, but they are more difficult to link with their underlying performance indicators, especially over time. Strategy maps seek to establish cause-and-effect relationships among factors that are key to financial success; however, these associations are typically discovered and maintained through casual observation, intuition and gut feel. Linking strategy formulation to tactical execution remains a critical capability in organizations, and certain corporate planning vendors help support these initiatives.”
Another Gartner report lists and analyzes 25 vendors of corporate planning products: Advanced, Calumo, Corporater, CP Corporate Planning, CXO Solutions, deFacto Global, FinanceSeer, Finario, Hicare Research, Idu, Insightsoftware.com, Jonova, Kepion, KPISoft, LucaNet, Metapraxis, Planview, Prevedere, Prevero, Prophix, Quantrix, River Logic, Sigma Conso, Solver, and XLerant. On the basis of the capsule descriptions of each vendor’s offerings, it seems that none are employing even moderately sophisticated technology, or are delivering comprehensive beginning-to-end, integrated products. Many simply leverage features in several Microsoft products (e.g., Excel, SQL Server, PowerPoint).
In concluding this report, Gartner states that “No one vendor can provide a technology framework to support all combined strategic financial and operational planning, especially within large and complex organizations. However, corporate planning vendors can provide the “glue” to link various aspects of strategic and operational plans to financial and enterprise performance targets.” We believe that our products will provide that glue and much more.
A large number of businesses are offering software products designed to automate many of the operational tasks associated with the traditional marketing and finance corporate functions. Some appear to tie in with existing strategic planning activities. Very few are trying to incorporate AI technologies. There is no company that has envisioned a comprehensive, thoroughly integrated, computerized rapid-response planning system.
In the strictest sense, none of the companies in this third category provide competition to our AI-driven strategic products. They are focused on narrower scope, tactical and operational tasks.
Our argument against their market positions is that their products address only small pieces of the marketing or finance ecosystems. They aim to automate tactical and operational activities, not strategic processes. They do not interrelate with each other or with other operational tasks. They do not fit into the organization-wide digital transformation movement that is sweeping through many industries. And the products are not well aligned with a client corporations strategic plans.
Our products are different in that they are strategic in scope (not tactical or operational), more forward-looking and transformational, integrated with processes throughout the organizational infrastructure, and technologically more advanced. We will be promoting those products for different purposes.
Competition in the future.
Competitors in the marketplace will not stand still.
Some of the largest corporations, already practicing a robust strategic planning function, are likely to be considering how they can add AI and other computer technologies to that function. Those with an ambitious attitude toward strategic planning will be attracted to the cutting-edge features of the products that we will offer. They will want to try them and, when impressed by the results, will acquire them. When their own competitors gain an advantage through use of our products, they will be drawn to them.
The most serious and direct competition will come from strategic management consulting firms. Their business will be most threatened, and they will have the resources to develop new AI-driven products in response. We simply must be more imaginative, agile, high-risk competitors.
The smaller Marketing and Finance automation vendors are planning to include AI features in their products, perhaps with a broader view of expanding the scope of their tactical-level products to encompass the strategic implications. To forestall them, we will have an even more ambitious vision and will move more rapidly. When we have achieved some scale and resources, we may choose to acquire some of these vendors with technologies that complement ours.
Progress Updates
This is a section of the website where we post news and updates about the progress regarding the project. You can find them sorted by date.
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