competitive-intelligence

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive insights are often locked in deal notes, lost opportunity records, and anecdotal rep knowledge. This skill mines Dataverse to surface structured competitive intelligence: which competitors appear most frequently, where deals are being lost to them, what deal patterns correlate with wins vs losses, and what talking points reps should use. This is the Dataverse-internal equivalent of competitive research — drawing from closed deal history rather than external sources.

Instructions

Step 1: Identify Competitor or Analysis Scope

Accept input from the user:

• Specific competitor name (to analyze one rival)
• All competitors (for a full competitive landscape view)
• Time range (default: last 12 months)
• Segment filter (by owner, territory, deal size, or industry)

Calculate date range for analysis: createdon >= '[start_date]'

Step 2: Identify Lost Deals with Competitor Information

Important: The opportunity entity does not have a direct competitorid field — the opportunity-to-competitor relationship is many-to-many (opportunitycompetitors_association). When an opportunity is closed, Dynamics 365 creates an opportunityclose activity record which does have a direct competitorid lookup. Use opportunityclose for structured competitor data on closed deals.

Query closed-lost opportunityclose records:

SELECT oc.opportunityid, oc.competitorid, oc.description, oc.createdon,
       oc.actualrevenue
FROM opportunityclose oc
WHERE oc.statecode = 1
AND oc.createdon >= '[start_date]'
ORDER BY oc.createdon DESC

Then join to the opportunity table by opportunityid to get deal details:

SELECT opportunityid, name, estimatedvalue, actualclosedate, salesstage,
       description, ownerid, customerid, closeprobability
FROM opportunity
WHERE statecode = 2
AND actualclosedate >= '[start_date]'
ORDER BY actualclosedate DESC

Note: If opportunityclose is not populated (competitor not selected at close), fall back to text pattern matching in opportunity description fields as described in Step 3.