Channel Intelligence was initially interesting because at first glance they looked like a more mature version of the system I’m building now, albeit in a more generic form.  After a more detailed review I see the match isn’t as strong, but there is definitely some similarity.

Here’s how they define themselves:

Helping consumers easily find and buy products is our primary goal. We accomplish this through innovative suites of marketing services for manufacturers, retailers and publishers.

CI divides its products into three lines:

• Manufacturer (or Brand Owner) tools (sellpath),
• Retailer tools (sellcast), and
• Publisher tools (sellcore)

Brand owner tools help in the management enrichment, and distribution of product information, as well as tools to track and identify referrals from these materials to provide marketing intelligence.

Retailer tools are centered around optimizing presentation in shopping comparison sites and tracking leads from (and therefore effectiveness of) online ad spend.

Publisher tools are targeted at (comparison) shopping site publishers and includes a turnkey comparison shopping solution as well as individual tools to assist in validation, correlation, categorization and integration of product data from disparate sources.

Another neat fact about CI is they have a good list of comparison sites – based on their own compatibility, but more comprehensive than I’ve seen to date.