Daki

Marcus Vinicius Velleca bernardi

Market Signals Advisor

Marcus Vinicius Velleca Bernardi is Head of Data & Analytics at Daki, with 17 years of experience in data strategy, governance, BI, AI, and geomarketing. He has led analytics teams across major companies, driving digital transformation and agile, data-driven decision-making in the retail and tech sectors.

In today’s business landscape, Competitive Intelligence (CI) has evolved from a back-office function to a strategic enabler. It’s no longer just about tracking your rivals. It’s about decoding an ever-shifting market to make faster, smarter decisions. While many companies in mature markets still see CI as a periodic report or benchmarking exercise, a new wave of Latin American retailers is redefining how CI is embedded into operations, and winning because of it.

From Reactive to Predictive

In Latin America, retail is fast, fragmented and fiercely competitive. Informal markets coexist with digital disruptors, and consumers expect hyper-local personalization. This pressure-cooker environment has forced retailers to innovate beyond traditional CI models.

Take, for example, a leading quick-commerce startup in Brazil. Competing against legacy supermarkets and global delivery platforms, it developed a geolocated pricing intelligence system that scrapes competitor prices daily from apps and websites. But instead of centralizing insights, it distributed them directly into store-level assortment and pricing tools. Managers could adjust promos based on real-time competitor behavior in their micro-region, driving both price perception and margin optimization. The startup quickly outperformed incumbents in perceived value and customer loyalty.

 The best-performing retailers understand that competitive advantage today depends less on having the most data, and more on how fast you turn insight into action. 

In Colombia, a home goods retailer used CI to inform its physical expansion. Layering competitor locations, foot traffic data, socioeconomic clusters, and real estate trends, it built a CI engine that didn’t just inform—it predicted. Store openings were prioritized not only by market potential but by expected competitor reaction. The outcome? Higher store productivity and minimized competitive cannibalization.

CI as a Cultural Capability

What sets these cases apart isn’t just the technology. It’s the mindset. In successful Latin American retailers, Competitive Intelligence is not a siloed function, it’s part of the company’s operational culture. Teams are trained to use CI tools as part of daily decision-making. Dashboards aren’t static, they trigger automated alerts when a competitor changes its pricing strategy, opens a new location, or shifts assortments.

This approach contrasts sharply with slower, more traditional models where CI is isolated in strategy departments and disconnected from real-time execution. The best-performing retailers understand that competitive advantage today depends less on having the most data, and more on how fast you turn insight into action.

Looking Ahead

For C-level executives, the takeaway is clear: in 2025, Competitive Intelligence must be more than a monthly slide deck. It should be a living system, decentralized, tech-enabled, and operationally embedded. Latin America’s most agile retailers are proving that it’s possible to democratize CI, bring it closer to the front lines, and use it not just to react, but to lead.

As global competition intensifies, the question is no longer whether you do CI—it’s whether your organization is structured to act on it at the speed the market demands.