Part 1: Mapping a Landscape or Sector

Best practices for mapping a landscape of companies

In this first part, of our landscape analysis and due diligence workflow, we are going to start with mapping the landscape of players/companies.

• Step 1: Instantly Determine the Overall Landscape
• Step 2: Accurately Pinpoint Specific Types of Players
• Step 3: Easily Identify Key Product Offerings and Revenue Streams

Step 1: Instantly Determine the Overall Landscape

The first step in any analysis is a keyword search for the landscape, in this case, “electric vehicle”. Plus we also want to filter our content sources to only company documents - this helps us ensure we only see companies who are themselves talking about electric vehicles.

Instantly I now have a list of companies, industries, and key regions involved in the electric vehicle landscape.

Step 2: Accurately Pinpoint Specific Types of Players

In our second step, we can further define some of the players/companies, by using advanced search techniques. For this search, we specifically want to isolate any suppliers in the electric vehicle landscape, as well as identify positive or negative sentiments around these suppliers.

By combining Smart Synonyms, with Boolean, and sentiment parameters, we can perform multiple search tasks at once.

Key resources for this step:

• The advanced search we used to identify suppliers
• How to use sentiment smart synonyms
• How to build advanced search strings
• Boolean quick reference guide

Step 3: Easily Identify Key Product Offerings and Revenue Streams

In our third step, I can quickly get up-to-speed on companies I am unfamiliar with. To do this, there are two areas of the company profile I want to use:

• Segments - this can help me quickly identify key revenue streams and geographies
• Company Topics - using the affinity filter helps me quickly see the topics that are unique to this company, and hence identify key product offerings