Generate business research reports with Claude, web search and Google Drive

This workflow is a fully automated AI-powered business intelligence agent. It accepts a research topic or company name via webhook, autonomously collects data from multiple live sources (web search, news feeds, financial APIs), runs a multi-stage Claude AI analysis pipeline, and delivers a structured professional business report — all without human intervention.

What's the Goal?

To eliminate the hours analysts spend manually gathering data, switching between tools, and writing reports. This workflow does it all in under 3 minutes:

• Collects live market and competitor data
• Pulls recent news and sentiment signals
• Runs deep AI analysis across all sources
• Generates a structured executive report with SWOT, risks, and opportunities
• Delivers the final report via email and saves to Google Drive

Why Does It Matter?

Manual business research is slow, inconsistent, and expensive. This workflow:

• Saves 4-8 hours of analyst time per report
• Produces consistent, structured outputs every time
• Runs on a schedule or on-demand via API
• Scales to any number of topics or companies
• Integrates directly into your CRM, Slack, or email
• Generates billable deliverables for consulting agencies

How It Works

Stage 1 — INTAKE
Webhook receives a research request. Set node normalizes all inputs and stores credentials. IF node validates the request has a valid topic.

Stage 2 — DATA COLLECTION (parallel)
Three HTTP Request nodes run simultaneously:

• Serper.dev fetches top 10 Google results for the topic
• NewsAPI pulls the latest 10 news articles from the past 7 days
• Alpha Vantage fetches financial/market data if a ticker is provided

Stage 3 — DATA PROCESSING
Code node merges and cleans all collected data. Extracts headlines, snippets, URLs, publication dates, sentiment signals, and key figures into a structured context object ready for AI analysis.

Stage 4 — AI ANALYSIS (3-pass Claude pipeline)
Pass 1 — Research Synthesis: Claude reads all raw data and extracts key facts, trends, and signals
Pass 2 — Strategic Analysis: Claude performs SWOT analysis, identifies risks and opportunities
Pass 3 — Report Generation: Claude writes the final structured executive report in Markdown

Stage 5 — OUTPUT & DELIVERY
Report is saved to Google Drive as a document. Summary is posted to Slack. Full report is emailed via SendGrid. All metadata is logged to Google Sheets. Webhook returns JSON response.

Configuration Requirements

• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY — Claude AI (claude-sonnet-4-20250514)
• SERPER_API_KEY — Google Search results (serper.dev, free tier available)
• NEWSAPI_KEY — News articles (newsapi.org, free tier available)
• ALPHA_VANTAGE_KEY — Financial data (alphavantage.co, free tier available)
• SENDGRID_API_KEY — Email delivery
• SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL — Slack notifications
• GOOGLE_DRIVE_FOLDER_ID — Where to save reports
• GOOGLE_SHEET_ID — Report audit log

Setup Guide

Step 1: Import this workflow into your n8n instance
Step 2: Open the Set Credentials node and replace all placeholder values with your real API keys
Step 3: Set your GOOGLE_SHEET_ID in the Log to Sheets node
Step 4: Set your GOOGLE_DRIVE_FOLDER_ID in the Save to Drive node
Step 5: Configure your Slack webhook URL in the Notify Slack node
Step 6: Activate the workflow or trigger manually via POST

Sample Request

POST /webhook/business-report
{
"topic": "OpenAI market position 2025",
"company": "OpenAI",
"ticker": "",
"industry": "Artificial Intelligence",
"reportType": "competitive_analysis",
"recipientEmail": "[email protected]",
"urgency": "standard"
}

Report Types Supported

• competitive_analysis
• market_research
• industry_overview
• company_profile
• investment_brief