The number of products you have, the specs for all of them, the pricing, the sales, and so on and so on might be in the forefront of your mind to be recalled at a seconds notice. Even if your memory isn't the best, I'd imagine most will have all the files they need in an easy to get to location.

All of this is going to be particular needed for forms of marketing like catalog printing. Here is something that is literally a list of your products with detailed information next to all of it.

The real thing to wonder about is how much do you know about the competition? Do you know all of their costs, their benefits, and their catalogs of products? If you don't you might have a serious problem on your hands.

The more you know about what you're up against the better of a chance you'll have of staying ahead of them. The worse thing that can happen is spending a large chunk of money on a massive catalog printing campaign only to realize after the money is spent that your competition has beaten you to the punch on something like pricing or product releases.

Think about movies for a second. I've seen it happen before where two studios both make movies based around similar concepts, and then both movies are released within a few months of each other. Guess which movie gets the best sales and the best reviews: the one that came out first. The studio who made the movie released after the first is going to lose a lot of money due entirely to the fact that they weren't paying attention to what the competition was up to.

If you know what the competition is planning you can be sure to get in ahead of them and stop a scenario like this from happening.

You need to know them just as well as you know yourself. Follow their public statements, their marketing material, and everything else as closely as you can. Keep information on them that's just as detailed as the database you have about yourself.

The companies that make sure they keep careful track of everyone else are the ones that are able to dominate their particular market. I can guarantee you that Microsoft is well aware of any development within the computer world. Even if they aren't the first to do it, I'm quite sure they're aware it's happening, and that they made the choice not to get involved themselves.

Knowledge is power; never forget the truth to this statement. Whatever your competition is doing, ask yourself if you can do it better.