ZenRows uncovers UK SME competitor blind spot

Zenrows has published the findings from a survey of 250 leaders in UK SMEs on competitor intelligence. Carried out by 3Gem, the survey looked at knowledge-based businesses with fewer than 250 employees. It found that only 53% regularly collect and use competitive data. Despite this low figure, respondents believe that 37% of their competitors use business intelligence most or all of the time, and a further 54% use it some of the time.

The reality of how many use competitive intelligence probably lies between the two. Many organisations do track competitors through other means, the top three being:

• Review Sites: – 65%
• Web scraping of competitor data such as pricing, products, reviews – 63%
• Social media monitoring – 54%
• Competitive Intelligence tools – 52%

The question is how effective that data collection is, and then, what they do about it. Of these, web scraping (27%) and review site analysis (23%) are seen as the most effective tools. Competitive intelligence tools were seen as the most effective by only 16%, and social media monitoring by 11%. However, it isn’t clear from the data provided what percentage of those using competitive intelligence tools found it effective; presumably, it was slightly higher.

What is perhaps most concerning is not only that some are collecting the data, but also how organisations use it. The survey found that 72% are using spreadsheets, and 58% are using Word (or equivalent).

Ander Rodriguez, Co-founder and CTO of ZenRows, commented, “This survey clearly shows a disconnect between the intentions of small business owners and their day-to-day actions.

“The fact that many are still not regularly tracking markets or competitors, even though they assume their competitors are, points to a ‘head in the sand’ mentality due to feeling overwhelmed. Even of those who are collecting this information, the majority are still using relatively static methods such as spreadsheets for storage and access. Suggesting that the new information age promised by AI is still some way off for most.”

Is outsourced business data valuable?

One of the key findings from the survey is that 43% of organisations that commission business intelligence data found the data unusable. The inference, though without a qualitative follow-up, would be that this is research by an external organisation. The challenge is understanding how much the organisation paid for the intelligence and what the remit was.

The follow-up questions asked why the business intelligence was found to be unusable. It isn’t clear whether respondents answered this question for outsourced intelligence or for a combination of outsourced and internal intelligence.

Regardless, many of the responses were due to a poor brief or a misinterpretation of it. The top three were:

• The technical person collecting the data misunderstood the brief
• The data was too complex
• The data set was too narrow

Despite this, 89% agreed that the business intelligence was worth paying for. It might have been useful to understand the ROI of outsourcing this. If ZenRows had wrapped a report around this data set, it might have offered valuable guidance on how to create those briefing documents. It might also have demonstrated the ROI of its own tools.

Good news for ZenRows

It is good news for Zenrows, whose web scraping technology can help automate the collection of competitive intelligence, industry trends, and crucial insights, populating databases to provide accurate insights for your business. It is just one of the use cases for the technology. With others including price monitoring, lead generation, sentiment analysis, other market research, and data collection for LLM training.

In addition, some of the qualitative feedback further strengthens the argument for web scraping. With comments on why they use it for collecting customer data, including:

• “It is the most effective means because it provides real-time insights into customer behaviour.”
• “It is the most effective tool for our organization because the work is underground and does not necessarily need someone. The data extracted from the Internet is more authentic.”
• “It’s effective because it provides real-time insights into market trends, customer preferences and competitor behavior.”

Rodriguez concluded, “There is clearly an appetite among smaller businesses to access better information in order to make smarter business decisions, but it seems many have been badly let down in their previous attempts to do so.

“While vendors and consultants can certainly do a better job of guiding these smaller, less tech-savvy, organisations through the complexities of online data, it is also important that SME owners investigate the new opportunities open to them, especially as AI becomes ever more accessible, levelling the playing field dramatically.”

Enterprise Times: What does this mean

While few data points were highlighted in the press release ZenRows pushed out, the survey likely had enough data to produce an interesting report. One that could have provided some interesting guidance for SME leaders. It will be interesting to see how the firm leverages the data in the coming weeks.

ZenRows is a fast-growing startup that has doubled its employee count in the last six months. It also brought on board Alina Sharapova as Director of Engineering. As 2026 unfolds, it will be interesting to see how the product develops over the next few months and how many customers it can add to its base that already numbers 20,000.

The post ZenRows uncovers UK SME competitor blind spot appeared first on Enterprise Times.