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

Description

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