About the Company
Industry
Industrial Machinery Manufacturing
Headquarters
Pennsylvania, United States
Employees
5k+
Founded
1919
Executive Summary
A Global industrial manufacturing company, founded in 1919, and operating across infrastructure-driven markets wanted to monitor competitive and market developments in a better way.
Data center infrastructure, Semiconductor manufacturing, Power generation, Water and wastewater systems, EV battery facilities & Pharmaceutical manufacturing infrastructure were the sectors where this company operated. These are sectors where large capital projects, regulatory changes, and competitor innovations significantly impacted market share.
The Leadership in this firm understood the fact that getting insights on market signals around competitors, projects, and industry shifts early could directly impact strategy and RevOps. However, the bottleneck for this entire process was the highly manual and scattered competitive intelligence workflow. This caused a massive reduction in the speed and consistency of insight delivery.
To solve this very problem, they incorporated Contify’s Market & Competitive Intelligence platform in their workflow with the aim of centralizing intelligence gathering and automating signal monitoring.
Company Overview
The company is a global industrial manufacturer focused on mechanical pipe-joining, flow control, and fire-protection solutions, serving complex piping applications across commercial, industrial, infrastructure, and fire-protection markets. It positions itself around helping engineers, contractors, and site owners improve installation speed, reduce project risk, and support safer, more efficient construction outcomes.
The Challenge
Before adopting a real-time competitive intelligence platform like Contify, the organization faced three major operational barriers.
Competitive intelligence required significant manual effort
The company’s competitive intelligence team relied on multiple data sources to track competitors, projects, and industry developments. Analysts pulled information manually from financial and market intelligence databases, industry publications, regulatory filings, company websites and press releases & public infrastructure project records
Each intelligence request required analysts to manually gather data, consolidate findings and produce reports for stakeholders. Depending on the scope of the request, analysis needed several days of research.
Intelligence workflows were largely reactive
Most intelligence projects in the company were initiated when stakeholders requested information.
Their typical workflows looked like this:
- Requests coming in from sales, marketing, or leadership teams
- Analysts using multiple sources to gather data
- Analysis and consolidation of data manually
- Delivery of insights through the medium of reports, decks or emails.
While effective for deep analysis, this process made it difficult to constantly monitor market developments and detect early signals.
Market signals were scattered across hundreds of sources
The company needed to track signals that were present across multiple segments simultaneously. This included the likes of competitor strategies, infrastructure project announcements, M&A details, investments, regulatory developments, and upcoming technologies.
However, relevant information appeared across a wide variety of sources including trade publications, industry associations, government portals, press releases, and social media channels. Analysts often had to manually triangulate information before identifying meaningful insights.
Solution
To streamline its intelligence operations, the organization implemented Contify’s Market and Competitive Intelligence platform. The platform was configured to track three major intelligence areas:
Competitor Intelligence
The firm configured tracking for key competitors to get insights on developments such as new product launches, certifications and regulatory approvals, facility expansions, pricing updates, mergers and acquisition deals, leadership changes & partnership announcements. This enabled the intelligence team to continuously monitor competitor positioning and strategic initiatives.
Customer and Account Intelligence
The platform also tracked developments among key customers and strategic accounts. The signals that were monitored included capital investments, project announcements, facility expansions, restructuring and leadership changes & digital transformation initiatives. This allowed the company’s commercial teams to identify new opportunities and expansion signals earlier than ever.
Industry and Market Intelligence
The company also configured monitoring across several infrastructure sectors relevant to its business. This included data centers, semiconductor manufacturing, EV battery production, power generation & water infrastructure.
Key topics that were tracked included:
- regulatory developments
- sustainability initiatives
- energy resilience
- emerging technology adoption
This provided leadership with a wider view of industry forces shaping the market.
Insight Delivery Format
Contify enabled the organization to distribute intelligence across multiple teams through automation. These included:
- Real time competitive intelligence dashboards: Providing visibility into competitor activity and market developments.
- Curated intelligence newsletters: Automatically delivering key insights to stakeholders.
- Personalized alerts: Ensuring that teams receive updates relevant to their role.
- AI-generated summaries: Helping stakeholders quickly understand the impact of new developments.
This allowed intelligence to reach teams including marketing, sales, product management, corporate strategy & leadership, without requiring manual reporting cycles.
Results
| Before Contify | After Contify |
| Analysts manually monitored dozens of fragmented information sources including industry publications, regulatory filings, company announcements, and project databases. | Automated monitoring continuously tracked hundreds of relevant digital sources across competitors, customers, and industry developments. |
| Intelligence workflows were largely reactive, with insights generated only when stakeholders requested research. | Continuous signal monitoring surfaced competitor moves, infrastructure investments, and market developments in near real time, making intelligence workflows proactive. |
| Analysts spent significant time gathering and validating information before producing reports. | Manual monitoring effort reduced by 50–70%, allowing analysts to focus on interpreting signals and delivering strategic insights. |
| Market intelligence was scattered across multiple tools, reports, and analyst workflows. | The central intelligence platform provided constant visibility into market developments across the organization. |
| Intelligence insights were shared primarily through ad hoc reports, emails or decks. | Dashboards, alerts, and curated intelligence newsletters distributed insights automatically across teams. |
| Market awareness depended heavily on the intelligence team’s bandwidth. | Marketing, sales, product, and strategy teams now received relevant signals directly, enabling faster and more informed decisions. |
Impact
- 55% reduction in manual intelligence monitoring effort.
- Continuous tracking across hundreds of market and competitor sources
- Intelligence delivered to multiple business functions automatically
- Transition from reactive intelligence reporting to real-time and proactive market awareness with focus on Security, Governance, and Source Quality in Competitive Intelligence.
Conclusion
This case shows that the real challenge is making intelligence usable at the point where decisions are made. With Contify, the client incorporated an intelligence delivery layer that reduced noise, streamlined insights, and created consistency for them. The result was not just a more efficient M&CI program, but one where executives could quickly understand what mattered and why. If you’re trying to surface the right intelligence, frame it in a way leaders can act on it, and free analysts from manual drudge work, that’s the kind of difference this approach delivers.Learn how Contify can help your CI efforts. Visit contify.com or book a demo today.
FAQ’s
How does a competitive intelligence platform reduce manual research effort?
A competitive intelligence platform reduces manual research effort by automatically collecting, organizing, and analyzing large volumes of market and competitor data in one place. Instead of manually searching multiple sources, AI-driven competitive intelligence platforms like Contify continuously scans news, project announcements, regulatory filings, and industry databases to capture relevant updates and insights.
For companies in the manufacturing domain, these platforms significantly reduce manual competitive intelligence monitoring while providing faster access to real-time market intelligence and manufacturing competitive intelligence insights needed for strategic decisions and competitive advantage.
Which market signals should industrial manufacturers track in real time?
Industrial manufacturers should track the following key signals in real time:
- Competitor activity such as new product launches, facility expansions, partnerships, and technology investments—core inputs for industrial manufacturing competitive intelligence.
- Infrastructure and industrial project announcements, which help with real time monitoring of competitors and infrastructure projects and identifying upcoming demand.
- Capital investments and plant expansions in sectors like energy, transportation, or electronics, which are important for market intelligence for data center and semiconductor manufacturing.
- Supply chain developments, including supplier changes, procurement activity, and raw material availability.
- Regulatory and policy updates that could influence manufacturing investments or infrastructure development.
Using AI-driven competitive intelligence offered by platforms like Contify, manufacturers can automate competitor and market signal tracking and receive updates through competitive intelligence dashboards and competitive intelligence alerts, ensuring teams always have access to relevant real time market intelligence.
How do manufacturers measure ROI from competitive intelligence software?
Manufacturers typically measure ROI from competitive intelligence software by evaluating time savings, improved decision speed, and the business impact of faster and informed decision making. A modern market and competitive intelligence platform reduces hours spent on manual research by enabling teams to automate competitor and market signal tracking and receive insights through competitive intelligence dashboards and competitive intelligence alerts.
ROI from competitive intelligence software is often calculated using metrics such as:
- Reduction in manual competitive intelligence monitoring
- Faster response to competitor moves using real time competitive intelligence
- Better identification of new projects and opportunities through real time market intelligence
- Higher sales win rates or improved strategic planning from AI-driven competitive intelligence
To help quantify these benefits, manufacturers can use a tool like Contify’s M&CI Savings Calculator. It allows organizations to estimate how much time and cost they could save by replacing manual research with an automated competitive intelligence platform, making it easier to evaluate the business value before investing in a solution.
