Business or Battlefield?

Abstract

"In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running; if you stand still, they will swallow you." said William Knudsen. There are rare businesses where monopoly or monopolistic situations prevail. Today’s business is nothing but a battlefield.

‘How to survive?’ is most sold topic in business consultancy. A lot of theories and models were developed to stand in competitive environment. Few of them are described here. The objective of article is to enlighten on basic concepts of "Competitive Intelligence".

Strategies differ in terms of situation and age. Today in hyper competitive environment one must follow through basic strategies.

"Competitive analysis is very easy term to understand and very tough step to implement."

Just jot down the answers of below questions:

1. Who are you?
2. In which business are you?
3. What do you sell? Product or service?
4. Who are your competitors?
5. What do your competitors sell?
6. What are your strengths and weaknesses in market?
7. What are your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in market?

Answering above questions is your basic preparation for competitive analysis.

Fill four squares.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are four squares, which must be filled up after analyzing yourself and competitors in terms of product & services.

"Failure is key of Success." If you find yourself weak somewhere, you can map it out to your future opportunities.

Few parameters to analyze to follow up competitive analysis

1. Company image VS Competitor’s image
2. Market distribution and channel
3. Reputation for quality of product and services
4. Familiarity with market
5. Market size and growth
6. Pricing strategies
7. New product ideas
8. Product development
9. Product availability
10. Positioning
11. Advertising and promotion
12. Sales force
13. Sale after services
14. Public relationships

Celine Dion said "I'm not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance." It is again another angle of competitive analysis. Put yourself as competitor irrespective of economical hazards.

What is use of Competitive analysis?

1. Forecast competitor’s strategies.
2. Planning your strategies.
3. Understanding competitors’ behavior
4. Planning your behavior
5. Targeting and capturing consumer and market

Resulting strategies

On the beginning of Gulf War, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf said, " I can not have commanders who do not understand that it is attack, attack, attack, attack, and destroy every step of the way."

The war game is an effective tool for uncovering hidden weaknesses - your own and those of your competitors. Al Ries & Jack Trout have described different situations on warfare in their book" Marketing Warfare". Basically there are four warfare situations where you need to adopt different strategies.

Defensive
1. Only the market leader should consider playing defense.
2. The best defensive strategy is the courage to attack you.
3. Strong competitive moves should always be blocked.

Offensive
1. The main consideration is the strength of the leader's position
2. Find a weakness in the leader's strength and attack at that point.
3. Launch the attack on as narrow a front as possible.

Flanking
1. A good flanking move must be made into an uncontested area.
2. Tactical surprise ought to be an important element of the plan.
3. The pursuit is just as critical as the attack itself.

Guerilla
1. Find a segment of the market small enough to defend.
2. No matter how successful you become, never act like the leader.
3. Be prepared to bug out at a moment's notice

Technology & Marketing Warfare

Competitive analysis is not one time activity. If you really believe in competitive analysis, you need to understand creating infrastructure, which helps you to gather data and information, process them and analyze in details. And information technology is the weapon to minimize time and cost improving quality of work.

Tracking intelligence

Competitive analysis is processed analysis of data and information pertaining to your performance and competitor’s performance in market. Storing data under robust architectures and using statistical and mining tools like SAS, Intelligentminer, Cognos or Quest are necessary. Cost of architecture depends on key requirement and tools you need to use.

GIS

Geographical Information System helps you to understand market competitiveness plotting every minute details on charts and maps. It makes easy access to your database geographically. It is the best solution for multi notational or global players. Visit ESRI ’s portal for further details.

Portal analysis

Website is the best source for competitive analysis. Desk research is being one of the outsourced activities. Details like products, services, philosophy, vision and objectives, news, investment related information, clients, partners, branches and current happenings would be easily known from competitor’s websites.

On line surveys

Arie de Geus says, "The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage." Online surveys are best solution to get quick responses from customers. It is the most successful solution as it is targeted. It is quick tools in gathering information about the marketplace, or feedback about your company or products. Visit Createsurvey.com, Advancedsurvey.com or Surveymonkey.com for further information.

This is not an exhaustive description of solutions. Technology is not limited to any horizon.

Conclusion

Competitive analysis or competitive intelligence is just open eyes and mind to understand what is happening in market. Plan it well. Organize it well. Implement. Improve upon mistakes. There are the basic solutions of life. It also applies to business life.

And at last…

"Enjoy the successes that you have, and don't be too hard on yourself when you don't do well. Too many times we beat up on ourselves. Just relax and enjoy It." - Patty Sheehan