Company Context

NovaRetail is a mid-market retail analytics SaaS company serving 1,200 brands and merchants across North America. The company generates $48M ARR, grows at 22% YoY, and sells a subscription platform that helps retailers optimize pricing, promotions, and inventory planning. NovaRetail has historically won on product depth in traditional BI workflows, but over the last 12 months, customers have begun asking for more forward-looking guidance on fast-changing market conditions such as competitor pricing shifts, new AI tools, channel mix changes, and evolving retailer media networks.

Strategic Situation

The CEO has asked the strategy team to design a repeatable way for NovaRetail to stay ahead of industry trends and convert that market intelligence into better product roadmap choices, sharper positioning, and faster go-to-market decisions. Today, trend monitoring is ad hoc: product managers follow competitors informally, sales hears customer feedback in the field, and marketing tracks analyst reports, but there is no centralized process, no common taxonomy, and no clear owner. Leadership wants to know whether NovaRetail should invest in a formal “industry intelligence” capability now, and if so, what scope, operating model, and business impact to target over the next 12 months.

Data Points

• In the last 2 quarters, 31% of lost deals cited a competitor with stronger AI positioning.
• Sales cycle has increased from 72 days to 89 days over 12 months.
• Product team estimates 15-20% of roadmap capacity was spent on features later deemed low-priority by customers.
• A lightweight intelligence function would cost about $600K annually (2 FTEs, tools, analyst subscriptions).
• Leadership believes better trend detection could improve win rate by 3-5 percentage points and reduce roadmap waste by 5-8 points.

Deliverables

You are the Head of Strategy. Prepare a recommendation for the executive team.

1. Assess whether NovaRetail should build a formal industry-trend and competitive-intelligence capability now.
2. Size the potential business impact using the data provided and reasonable assumptions.
3. Recommend the scope and operating model: centralized team, embedded model, or hybrid.
4. Propose how insights should feed into product, sales, and marketing decisions.
5. Define the first-year priorities, success metrics, and key risks.

Constraints

• Incremental budget available this year is capped at $750K.
• The CEO wants measurable impact within 2 quarters.
• Product, sales, and marketing leaders are protective of their existing workflows.
• NovaRetail cannot materially slow current roadmap delivery while standing up the new capability.