How to Create a Competitive Intelligence Report for SaaS

Every successful SaaS company has one thing in common: they understand their competitive landscape better than their competitors understand them.

Yet most founders approach competitive intelligence haphazardly by checking a competitor's pricing page occasionally, skimming their blog posts, maybe setting up a Google Alert. This reactive approach leaves money on the table and strategic blind spots uncovered.

A well-structured competitive intelligence report transforms scattered observations into actionable strategy. It's the difference between guessing what competitors will do next and anticipating their moves with confidence.

In this guide, you'll learn exactly how to create a competitive intelligence report that drives real business decisions, including the framework we use at Tierly to analyze hundreds of SaaS pricing strategies.

What Is a Competitive Intelligence Report?

A competitive intelligence report is a strategic document that systematically analyzes your competitors' activities, strategies, and market positioning. Unlike casual competitor research, a CI report follows a structured methodology to produce actionable insights.

The goal isn't to copy competitors, but to understand the competitive landscape deeply enough to make better strategic decisions.

CI Reports vs Competitor Analysis

These terms are often used interchangeably, but there's an important distinction:

• Competitor Analysis: A snapshot of individual competitors at a point in time
• Competitive Intelligence Report: An ongoing, systematic process that tracks trends, predicts moves, and informs strategy

Think of competitor analysis as a photograph; competitive intelligence is the entire photo album plus the story of how things changed over time.

Why SaaS Companies Need Competitive Intelligence Reports

The SaaS market moves fast. Pricing changes, features launch, positioning shifts often without announcement. Without systematic tracking, you're making decisions with outdated information.

The Cost of Flying Blind

Here's what happens without proper competitive intelligence:

☒ Pricing mistakes: You underprice (leaving revenue on the table) or overprice (losing deals you should win)

☒ Feature gaps: Competitors ship capabilities your customers need, and you don't find out until churn interviews

☒ Positioning collisions: Multiple competitors converge on the same messaging, making differentiation impossible

☒ Missed opportunities: Market shifts create openings you don't see until it's too late

The ROI of Systematic CI

Companies with formal competitive intelligence programs report:

• 22% higher win rates in competitive deals (Crayon)
• 60+ days shorter deal cycles in customer case studies (Klue)
• 15-point increase in win rates within 18 months (Klue enterprise customers)

The investment in CI pays for itself many times over.

AI Is Transforming Competitive Intelligence

The way teams conduct competitive intelligence has fundamentally shifted. Industry data shows that 60% of CI teams now use AI daily, a remarkable 76% year-over-year increase in AI adoption (Crayon State of Competitive Intelligence). By 2026, that figure is expected to be even higher as AI tools become embedded into standard CI workflows.

This represents a fundamental change in how competitive intelligence operates. Just two years ago, only about 25% of CI leaders were using AI tools, with the majority still "planning to implement." That planning phase is over. AI has moved from experimental to essential infrastructure.

The top use cases driving this adoption:

• Content summarization: Distilling competitor announcements, earnings calls, and market reports into actionable briefs
• Change monitoring: Automated tracking of pricing pages, feature updates, and positioning shifts
• Data analysis: Processing large volumes of win/loss data, review sentiment, and market signals

This isn't about replacing human analysis. AI handles the time-consuming data processing so CI professionals can focus on strategic interpretation and recommendations. The result: what once took 40 hours of manual research can now be accomplished in under 30 minutes.

The 7 Essential Components of a CI Report

Every effective competitive intelligence report contains these core elements. Skip any of them, and you'll have blind spots in your strategy.

1. Executive Summary

Start with the insights that matter most. Your executive summary should answer:

• What are the 3-5 most important competitive developments?
• What immediate actions should we consider?
• What trends should we monitor?

Keep it to one page. Either you as a (solo) founder or the executives won't read more.

2. Competitor Profiles

For each significant competitor, document:

• Company overview: Size, funding, target market, growth trajectory
• Product summary: Core offerings, recent launches, roadmap signals
• Pricing structure: Tiers, pricing model, discounting patterns
• Go-to-market: Sales approach, marketing channels, messaging
• Strengths and weaknesses: Where they excel and where they struggle

Pro tip: Prioritize 3-5 primary competitors for deep analysis. You can't track everyone equally.

3. Product/Feature Comparison

Create a feature matrix comparing your product against competitors across key capabilities. This becomes invaluable for:

• Product roadmap prioritization
• Sales battlecards
• Marketing differentiation

Update this monthly, as features ship constantly in SaaS.

4. Pricing Analysis

This is where most CI reports fall short. Surface-level pricing comparisons miss the nuance:

• Tier structure: How many tiers? What's included at each level?
• Pricing model: Per-seat, usage-based, flat-rate, hybrid?
• Price points: Actual numbers at various usage levels
• Discounting: Annual vs monthly, volume discounts, promotional offers
• Value perception: How does pricing align with perceived value?

5. SWOT Analysis

For each major competitor and for your own company:

• Strengths: What do they do better than anyone?
• Weaknesses: Where do they consistently fall short?
• Opportunities: What market gaps could they exploit?
• Threats: What could disrupt their business?

The most valuable insight often comes from comparing your SWOT to competitors' SWOTs.

6. Market Positioning Map

Visualize where competitors sit along key dimensions:

• Price vs features
• Enterprise vs SMB focus
• Horizontal vs vertical specialization
• Self-serve vs sales-led

This reveals positioning white space you can own.

7. Strategic Recommendations

The most important section. Every CI report should conclude with:

• Immediate actions: What should we do this quarter?
• Monitoring priorities: What should we watch closely?
• Strategic considerations: What long-term shifts should we consider?

Without recommendations, your CI report is just an interesting read, not a strategic tool!

How to Create a Competitive Intelligence Report: Step-by-Step

Now let's walk through the actual process of building your CI report.

Step 1: Define Your Competitive Set

Not all competitors deserve equal attention. Categorize them:

• Primary competitors (3-5): Direct alternatives your prospects actively evaluate (track deeply, update monthly)

• Secondary competitors (5-10): Partial overlap in features or market (track moderately, update quarterly)

• Tertiary competitors: Adjacent solutions or potential future threats (monitor loosely, review semi-annually)

Step 2: Establish Data Sources

Build a systematic data collection process:

⦿ Public sources:

• Competitor websites and pricing pages
• Press releases and blog posts
• G2, Capterra, and review sites
• LinkedIn company pages and job postings
• SEC filings (for public companies)
• Social media and community forums

⦿ Research sources:

• Industry analyst reports
• Market research databases
• Conference presentations
• Podcast interviews with competitor leadership

⦿ Internal sources:

• Win/loss analysis from sales
• Customer feedback and churn reasons
• Support ticket themes
• Sales call recordings

Step 3: Analyze Pricing Structures

Pricing analysis deserves special attention. For each competitor:

1. Document all tiers: Names, prices, billing options
2. Map included features: What's in each tier?
3. Identify pricing model: Per-seat, usage-based, etc.
4. Calculate value metrics: Price per feature, price per user at scale
5. Note recent changes: Price increases, tier restructuring

Step 4: Conduct Feature Analysis

Build your feature comparison matrix:

1. List all features across your product and competitors
2. Categorize by: Core, Advanced, Enterprise
3. Note which tier includes each feature
4. Identify gaps and unique capabilities
5. Assess feature quality, not just presence

Step 5: Analyze Positioning and Messaging

Study how competitors present themselves by interpreting:

• Taglines and value propositions: What do they lead with?
• Target audience: Who do they speak to?
• Differentiation claims: What do they say makes them unique?
• Proof points: What evidence do they cite?

Look for patterns and positioning collisions.

Step 6: Synthesize Insights

Raw data isn't intelligence. So, work on your findings to:

• Identify patterns: What trends appear across competitors?
• Spot anomalies: What's one competitor doing differently?
• Connect dots: How do pricing, features, and positioning relate?
• Generate hypotheses: Why might competitors be making these choices?

Step 7: Develop Recommendations

Translate insights into action:

• Quick wins: What can we act on immediately?
• Strategic initiatives: What requires deeper investment?
• Monitoring triggers: What changes should prompt action?

✦ Competitive Intelligence Report Examples

Let's look at how different sections might appear in practice.

Visual SWOT Analysis

Real-World CI Insights: What SaaS Pricing Teardowns Reveal

Theoretical frameworks are useful. But the best way to learn competitive intelligence is by studying real examples. At Tierly, we run detailed pricing teardowns of SaaS companies, using AI-powered analysis to score pricing structures and compare them against competitors.

Here's what our competitive intelligence reports have revealed across four recent teardowns:

Pricing Perception Gaps Are Universal

Every company we've analyzed has at least one tier where price perception scores significantly lag feature scores. Notion scores 7.4/10 overall but its Business tier creates a dangerous 2x price jump. Airtable scores 7.3/10 but its Enterprise tier drops to 6.6/10 due to pricing opacity. n8n has a 1,233% price jump between Starter and Pro.

CI report lesson: Always analyze the gap between what a competitor's tier offers and what buyers perceive the value to be. That gap is your opportunity.

Open-Source Competitors Change the Pricing Equation

In both the Linear and Airtable teardowns, open-source alternatives (Plane.so, Baserow, NocoDB) scored higher on overall pricing effectiveness despite offering fewer features. Buyers increasingly factor "self-hostable" and "transparent pricing" into their evaluation.

CI report lesson: Don't just track direct competitors. Include open-source alternatives in your competitive set, especially if they offer free self-hosted options.

Enterprise Opacity Hurts More Than It Helps

Across all four teardowns, custom Enterprise pricing without price anchors consistently received the lowest scores. Linear, n8n, and Airtable all lost points for hiding Enterprise pricing behind "Contact Sales" with no starting-at indicators.

CI report lesson: When documenting competitor Enterprise tiers, note whether they provide anchors. If they don't and you do, that's a positioning advantage worth highlighting in your battlecards.

These patterns repeat across SaaS categories. A good competitive intelligence report doesn't just catalog what competitors charge; it identifies the structural weaknesses you can exploit.

Tools for Competitive Intelligence

You don't have to do everything manually. Here are tools that can help:

Pricing Intelligence

• Tierly: AI-powered pricing intelligence tool for tier analysis and competitor tracking
• Prisync: E-commerce price monitoring
• Competera: Retail pricing optimization

Competitive Tracking

• Crayon: Comprehensive competitive intelligence platform
• Klue: Sales enablement focused CI
• Kompyte: Real-time competitive tracking

Market Research

• SEMrush: Digital marketing competitive analysis
• SimilarWeb: Website traffic and engagement data
• G2/Capterra: Review aggregation and comparison

General Research

• Owler: Company news and alerts
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Contact and company intelligence
• Crunchbase: Funding and company data

Common CI Report Mistakes to Avoid

After reviewing hundreds of competitive intelligence efforts, these mistakes appear repeatedly:

☒ Data Without Insight

Collecting information is easy. Transforming it into actionable intelligence is hard. Every data point should answer: "So what?"

☒ Infrequent Updates

A CI report from six months ago is archaeology, not intelligence. Build processes for continuous monitoring.

☒ Too Many Competitors

Tracking 20 competitors means tracking none well. Focus on the 3-5 that matter most.

☒ Ignoring Indirect Competition

Your biggest threat might not be a direct competitor. Consider:

• Adjacent solutions expanding into your space
• Internal tools (spreadsheets, manual processes)
• New entrants with different business models

☒ Analysis Paralysis

Perfect is the enemy of good. A basic CI report you act on beats a comprehensive one you never finish.

How to Keep Your CI Report Current

Competitive intelligence is a process, not a project. Therefore, you should build sustainable habits and stay consistent:

⦿ Daily (5 minutes)

• Review Google Alerts
• Check competitor social media
• Note any pricing page changes

⦿ Weekly (30 minutes)

• Review sales team competitive feedback
• Check for new reviews on G2/Capterra
• Update feature comparison if needed

⦿ Monthly (2 hours)

• Deep-dive on primary competitors
• Update pricing analysis
• Review win/loss patterns

⦿ Quarterly (1 day)

• Full CI report refresh
• Executive presentation
• Strategic recommendations update

Free CI Report Template Generator

Want to hit the ground running with your competitive intelligence? Use our free CI Report Generator to create a customized template in minutes!

What you'll get:

✓ Two versions in one document: Guided (with examples) and Clean (ready to use)

✓ All 7 essential sections:

• Executive summary framework with fill-in prompts
• Competitor profile worksheets (up to 3 profiles pre-filled)
• Feature comparison matrix
• Pricing analysis structure and tables
• SWOT analysis templates
• Market positioning map guidelines
• Strategic recommendation frameworks

✓ Customized for your industry: SaaS, Fintech, Healthcare, and more

✓ 20-page professional PDF: Instant download, no signup required

Frequently Asked Questions

Start Building Your Competitive Advantage

A competitive intelligence report isn't just a document. It's a strategic asset that compounds over time. Each update builds on previous knowledge, revealing patterns and trends invisible to competitors who only look occasionally.

The SaaS companies that win aren't necessarily the ones with the best products. They're the ones who understand their market deeply enough to make better decisions, faster.

Start with your top three competitors. Build your first CI report. Update it monthly. Within a quarter, you'll have insights your competitors don't, and that's the foundation of sustainable competitive advantage.