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Inside Channel Intelligence

Change Monitoring

What moved since last month — lines added or dropped, catalogs launched, competitor brands arriving, distributors going dark.

Scope
30–60 distributor domains
Cadence
Monthly, weekly or quarterly
First report
Within 15 business days
Deliverable
Monthly change report

The problem

What this is for

A census and a displacement map are true on the day they are delivered. Catalogs are not static: a distributor prunes a product line in March, a rival brand appears across four accounts in a region over a quarter, a site goes dark and nobody upstream notices for two more. Today those changes reach a manufacturer as anecdote from a sales call, months after they were published — which means the response is late by exactly the length of time the information sat unread on a public website.

What you are buying

A recurring crawl of 30 to 60 distributor domains against the baseline established by your census and displacement map, reporting what changed. Product lines added or dropped, new catalogs launched, distributors gone dark, competitor brands added or removed, categories expanding or contracting. Critical changes trigger an alert rather than waiting for the monthly report. Because the resolution cache carries over, a recurring run is a fraction of the work of the first.

The process

How the retainer runs

A diff is only as good as the baseline under it, and only as useful as the alert that interrupts you when something matters. Both are set up before the first recurring run.

  1. We fix the baseline the diffs are measured against

    The census and displacement map become the reference state: which domains, which catalogs, which brands in which categories, on which date. Every later report is a comparison against that, using the same definitions — because a change report where the definitions moved is just two different reports side by side.

    You getA dated baseline, per distributor and per category

    Baseline set

    Domains under monitoring
    41
    Product records in baseline
    68,300
    Rival brands tracked
    17
    Categories tracked
    38

  2. We re-crawl on your cadence

    Monthly as standard, weekly or quarterly where it suits the market. The crawl is the same one, at the same rate, against the same pages. Most of the first run was resolution, and resolution is cached permanently, so a recurring run is a fraction of the work.

    You getA fresh read of every monitored domain, on schedule

    Work per run, indexed to the first

    • First run100%
    • Month two31%
    • Month three24%

  3. We diff it, and only report what moved

    Lines added and dropped, catalogs launched, competitor brands arriving and leaving, categories expanding and contracting, distributors gone dark. A monthly report that restates the whole channel is a report nobody opens by month four; this one is short on a quiet month, and that is the point.

    You getA change report: additions, removals, and notable shifts

    Pipeline

    1. BaselineLast month
    2. Fresh crawl
    3. Differences onlyEverything else suppressed

  4. Critical changes alert you immediately

    A distributor going dark and a major competitor brand landing across several accounts do not wait for the end of the month. Those trigger an alert when they are detected. Everything else is deliberately not an alert — a monitoring service that pages you about a price change is one you will mute.

    You getAlerts on the changes that cannot wait for the report

    Alert rules

    Distributor gone dark
    Immediate
    Major competitor addition
    Immediate
    Your line dropped
    Immediate
    Everything else
    Monthly report

  5. Quarterly, we refresh the full picture

    Displacement and whitespace re-run in full, distributor scorecards updated, sales-call briefs regenerated for the accounts being visited, and one strategy review to decide what the trend actually means. Monthly reporting tells you what moved; the quarterly review is where you decide what to do about it.

    You getQuarterly refresh, scorecards, briefs and a strategy review

    Included each quarter

    Displacement and whitespace refresh
    Full
    Manufacturer resolutions
    Up to 500/mo
    Distributor scorecards
    All accounts
    Strategy review
    One per quarter

Also inside Channel Intelligence

Channel Census

The pilot. It answers a question you cannot answer today, and de-risks everything after it.

How it works

Displacement Mapping

The flagship. Competitor brands per distributor, per category, with evidence.

How it works

Whitespace Mapping

The inverse of displacement, and usually the easier sales conversation.

How it works

Distributor Qualification

Per domain, on demand. Diligence on the half of a distributor you can check yourself.

How it works

Next step

Start with the census.

Thirty minutes, no preparation needed. Tell us how many distributors you sell through and which categories you are contesting, and we'll tell you what a crawl of your channel would actually cover — including when the answer is not enough to be worth it.

Free · 30 minutes · no obligation