A 30-minute weekly routine, minute by minute, for leadership teams that want to follow competitors without building a department.
A leadership team can monitor competitors in 30 minutes a week if the reading happens before the meeting. Someone prepares one page of dated, sourced facts on competitors, markets, tenders and regulation; the team then uses a fixed 30-minute slot to agree what changed, what it means and who acts. The time goes to decisions, not to searching.
Because the reading happens before the meeting, and the meeting is only for decisions. A leadership team does not need to search for competitor news together. It needs one page that someone has already prepared, and a fixed slot to decide what to do about it.
Time is the real constraint. In a Harvard study of 27 CEOs by Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria, published in Harvard Business Review, the CEOs worked an average of 62.5 hours a week and spent 72 percent of their work time in meetings, as CNBC reported. Competitor monitoring has to fit inside that calendar, not next to it.
Volume is the other constraint. The EU's Tenders Electronic Daily alone carries around 800,000 public procurement notices a year, worth more than EUR 815 billion, according to the European Commission. Add competitor websites, registers, trade press, filings and regulation in several languages, and the raw stream is far beyond what any executive can read. The work is choosing the handful of items that touch your decisions this week.
One page, prepared and read in advance, with a clear structure and a source and date for every fact. Without it, the meeting turns into a round of anecdotes.
A page that works usually has:
The page goes out a day ahead so everyone reads it on their phone before the slot. What a weekly competitive intelligence brief should include goes through each section in more detail.
The routine has six blocks. The owner chairs it, keeps time and writes down decisions.
Two habits keep the routine honest. First, a fact without a date and a source does not go into a decision; it goes back to whoever prepares the page. Second, if a block has nothing relevant, skip it and give the minutes back.
Most of what a leadership team needs is public. The list below shows sources that matter for European and US industrial markets; the work is reading them consistently and in the right languages.
For the regulatory side, regulatory horizon scanning for leadership teams explains how to turn dated rules into commercial decisions.
One person on the leadership team, usually the executive who owns growth across markets: a CSO, CCO or Head of Sales and Marketing. In PE-owned companies the CFO often co-owns it, because pricing, tenders and input costs feed straight into the plan.
The owner does three things: sets the priorities with the CEO, makes sure the page arrives on time, and chairs the 30 minutes. They do not have to write the page themselves. Whether it is prepared inside the company or by a provider, see when outsourced competitive intelligence makes sense for the signals on each side.
Routines usually fade for practical reasons, not for lack of interest. Four are common:
After a quarter, look back at three questions: did any decision on pricing, a tender, capacity or a competitor move rest on a dated fact from the page; did you see the relevant tenders before their deadlines; and does the Monday meeting now open with what changed in your markets? If yes, the 30 minutes are working.
The hardest part of this routine is not the meeting. It is having a reliable page ready every week, in the right languages, without adding a role. That is the part Vias Digital takes over: your leadership team sets its competitors, markets, topics and decisions at a 45-minute kickoff, the first edition arrives within 48 hours, and from then on one page a week, every fact linked to its source and date, readings labelled as readings. Your team keeps the 30 minutes and the decisions. More on the service is on the Market & Competitive Intelligence page.
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Weekly for the running picture, quarterly for priorities. A weekly rhythm is short enough to catch tender deadlines, price changes and competitor announcements while you can still act, and long enough that each review has something to decide. Once a quarter, check whether the competitors and topics you follow are still the right ones.
As many as you can discuss in ten minutes. For most mid-sized B2B companies that means a handful of direct competitors plus a few adjacent players who could enter your market. A long list spreads attention thin; you can always add a name when a signal justifies it.
Alerts can tell you that a name appeared somewhere. They do not check dates, separate facts from opinion, read tender portals or registers, or tell you what an item means for a decision. They are a useful input for whoever prepares the page, not a replacement for the page.
Say so in one line and keep the meeting short. A week with no relevant change is useful information too. The routine earns its place over a quarter, not in every single week.
Someone with time to read sources carefully and a clear brief from the leadership team. That can be a person inside the company or an outside provider. What matters is that the same standards apply every week: a source and a date for every fact, readings labelled as readings.
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Five signals that outsourcing competitive intelligence makes sense, three that it does not, and what a hire, a platform or a managed brief costs.
By Raluca Baciu, Vias Digital. More in our insights.
Raluca Baciu, Founder, Vias Digital
Raluca Baciu founded Vias Digital in Zurich after about 15 years in communications for B2B, technology and healthtech companies. She previously ran her own digital agency for about seven years and advises Women in Tech Switzerland on communications and partnerships.
Market & Competitive Intelligence, Leadership routines
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