Proactive Worldwide, Inc Serving clients in global markets by delivering unique, high-impact insights

Businesses now exist in a highly competitive marketplace and providing just product or services without the knowledge of the ongoing market trends and demands won’t contribute to its success. They have to use competitive research to make strategic decisions that will drive company profit and productivity without costing much time and money. Business leaders have to make use of competitive intelligence to gather the trends, patterns, and relationships they see emerging across industry platforms and position their own brand, products, and company in the marketplace accordingly to stay ahead of the competition. 

That’s where Proactive Worldwide comes in. Proactive is a unique, client-centric company. Since its inception in 1995, Proactive Worldwide has evolved from a two-person operation into one of the world’s leading decision support, research, and consulting firms, with delivery teams in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For over 20 years, Proactive Worldwide’s multi-lingual professionals have assisted clients with competitive research studies and custom benchmarking services related to market and competitive positioning, market entry and defense strategies, customer insight analysis, and competitive alert programs. Proactive also helps clients develop and sustain in-house Competitive Intelligence functions within their own organizations.

Making consistent efforts to deliver excellent service

Initially, the major challenge they faced was financing. Financial institutions were not willing to risk the investment as the company was a young upstart with no reputation or history to fall back on. In addition, the billion-dollar, multi-divisional conglomerates they were targeting (GE, Wyeth, SC Johnson, American Express, Caterpillar, etc.) required a certain level of insurance and had payment terms as long as 90 to 120 days, which for any small start-up is problematic. However, they endured and truly started on their bootstraps financing with their own money.

The first competitive project that Proactive began was a small project of just a few thousand dollars for a major window manufacturer. That one single project blossomed into a multi-year intelligence program that evolved from one to three work streams giving a 360 degree market, competitive and customer intelligence perspective for nearly 15 years. After 20 years in business, despite many changes in leadership, the industry and competitive landscape, Proactive is still engaged with this very first client. Its core product has always focused on its clients’ need for intelligence, based on accurate evidence-based research, to propel their companies forward in new directions. Its intelligence-gathering services can be either competitive-centric, customer-centric, or a combination of these two categories. The advances made through data analytics and reporting have supported its successful expansion into strategic planning and multi-channel customer research to help organizations determine the appropriate pathways to profitability and growth.

Advancing clients’ competitive edge

“We’ve learned that part of our job as CI experts is to clearly define project scope, accurately convey deliverables, and demonstrate how this information will benefit the client in practical terms”, says the CEO. Over the life of PWW’s existence, one major rule of thumb that the company has steadfastly maintained is actively managing client expectations. Poor communication on this point leads to client frustration, and ultimately, client dissatisfaction. It’s essential that its competitive intelligence endeavors are based on realistic project goals that its clients understand: what research really entails; what can actually be delivered; when it can be delivered; and how much it will cost.

Proactive continues to drive innovations in competitive intelligence, helping to evolve its software partners’ offerings that best respond to changing client requirements in a big data world. Proactive leadership also maintains its standing at the forefront of continuing education in the field of Competitive/Market intelligence. As highly regarded thought leaders who share a commitment to best practices and continuing education, both Gary Maag and David Kalinowski lead boot camps and workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad for several industry professional events during the year to contribute their expertise and experience.

Meeting the challenges of an evolving business environment

Like most aspects of conducting business in today’s global environment, Competitive Intelligence is evolving, particularly in the new reality of big data analytics. While more static, snapshot ‘client vs. competition’ research at a given point of time may have sufficed in the past, the abundance of online data available today means its clients can take a much more comprehensive, three-dimensional view. The CEO said, “We’ve expanded our services and expertise to incorporate strategic planning to help our customers achieve more tactical, long-term goals with solutions that include Transformational Business Modeling, Scenario Planning, and War Gaming.” The Proactive team has just rolled out, in conjunction with its Intelligence2day^® software partners, a groundbreaking new service called “Ask an Analyst.” This cost-effective, subscription-based service was developed to give their growing clientele a rapid-response solution to their competitive/market intelligence needs. 

The company believes clear purpose, vision and passion for what they do, a strong executive team, subject matter expertise, industry experience and time-tested intelligence processes, approaches and methodologies are the factors that have helped them live in a space that positively changes people and business, and it always comes with the notion of delivering calculated business certainty and clarity by means of evidence based intelligence. 

Knowing the leader behind Proactive Worldwide, CEO Gary Maag: 

Proactive Worldwide was founded by Gary Maag and David Kalinowski. Gary has over 25 years of experience in competitive intelligence, research and consulting. As a passionate industry educator, the most popular topics in his workshops include demonstrating return on investment and the importance of evidence-based intelligence for decisions concerning business development in emerging markets. Gary has received the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals’ (SCIP) Catalyst Award as well as Northern Illinois University’s Distinguished Marketing Alumnus Award.

“We stand for a determination to succeed, a passion to make things clearer, a need to make significant contributions, an insatiable curiosity, and an uncommon ability to apply common sense to business situations.”