Simply Management: Effective Methods to Plan, Manage, and Improve Businesses. Warwick J Thompson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Cost Leadership, productivity, supply and delivery logistics, quality improvement & maintenance. All aspects of Positioning are driven and/or enhanced by the application of IT.

      When the business’ primary function is IT or a development from IP/Research, the strategies should consider:

      •Identifying a specific product

      •Time to market

      •Securing market penetration/acceptance, one niche at a time

      •Building market share in one niche before entering another

      •Support

      •Enhancement train

      I identify and stress these six elements because the nature of IT is constant innovation, destructive improvement, and new development. This is a fast-flowing river of continual change from which an actual product must be identified and chosen, then brought to commercialization by securing market acceptance and building share while the river of development continues. The benefits derived from the ongoing development are then brought to the established market through enhancements, thus demonstrating innovation and strengthening Positioning.

      All too frequently, IT professionals are swept along by the current in the development river, fail to identify a marketable product because better developments are always on their near horizon, take too long to get a product to market and fail to secure significant acceptance, don’t build market share, burn thru funds and finally crash.

      Developing and implementing strategies addressing the points above should ensure a positive outcome.

      (Of course, high-technology developments arising from university research programmes often display the same continuous flow of development as IT and are prone to exactly the same weaknesses. To succeed, they also must apply the same six elements, above.)

      3. CREATING THE STRATEGY

      Now you should have an understanding of what to consider when trying to develop a business strategy, and how Strategy differs from Success Factors.

      After ensuring all the relevant Success Factors successfully achieved (or will be), now turn your mind and attention to building a comprehensive Strategy - whether your business is a start-up, an existing business, or a new acquisition.

      Work your way successively through the Source Group lists. As the strategy develops, constantly ask yourself:

      •“Will this give me a competitive advantage?” and if so, how and why.

      •“Will that advantage be sustainable?” for how long, or how can it be made so.

      •“Will my product/service be clearly differentiated?” and if so, what will achieve that.

      •“What consumer need am I satisfying?” And does it matter to them.

      •“How will competitors react to my strategy?” – because they surely will.

      •“How will I/we respond?” and will the strategy still deliver competitive advantage.

      Following are some recent successful and unsuccessful business strategies that illustrate attention, or lack of it, to the process above.

      Case A.

      American fast-food chain Subway entered a mature, crowded and cluttered market in which some existing participants were struggling to remain viable. Subway was virtually an unknown.

      After attending to all the relevant success factors, their primary strategy was – and is – heavily built on health, nutrition and freshness, riding on a diet-conscious social mood, with a secondary strategy of variety, customer choice and value for money. Their differentiation from competitors and their positioning as the healthy alternative choice was -and is – quite clear.

      Their competitive advantage is sustainable because their product-offering and strategy is quite specific to their retail outlet: competitors are already firmly positioned in the consumer mind so that even offering some me-too products does not change the public perception. Try as they might, competitors cannot match the health/nutrition strategy of Subway, supported by a stream of product innovations.

      Case B.

      Two agricultural scientists planned to niche market a highly specialised consumable product to the arable/horticultural sectors. By both its formulation and ingredients, the product had some unique characteristics that would clearly differentiate it from the nearest competitor products.

      To secure their market advantage, they had almost exhausted their scarce funds in an attempt to patent their product in the local jurisdiction. The patent had not yet been applied for and both founders had taken alternative employment to earn more money for further funding the patenting effort.

      I advised them to discontinue the patenting track and pursue a three-part strategy instead. Firstly, get some technology security by negotiating with ingredient suppliers for a period of exclusivity based on volume-purchases. Secondly, get a number of field trials underway across a variety of end-users to prove the superiority and efficacy of their product. Communicate the positive results of those trials strongly to their potential market (using that market-promotion effort to draw in distribution from appropriate retail chains) and price the product on the basis of offering superior results for a competitive cost.

      Done quickly and done well, their brand would dominate the market niche and secure market advantage.

      Case C.

      A new mobile phone company planned to enter the market against two very strong well-established existing competitors. Their product offer had a very narrow and specific focus versus the competitors’ broad range of products and services.

      The new entrant had attended to their obvious success factors including at enormous capital cost, setting up towers to provide comprehensive communication coverage of all the main centres.

      Their strategy was heavily based upon very competitive pricing for text, voice and data. They would provide outstanding customer service, including portability and immediate registration of existing phone numbers for new customers switching from the existing competitors. They would communicate their price and service strategy aggressively to their target market – existing mobile phone users aged 15-35.

      In a casual conversation prior to launch with several of their executives, I offered the observation that their strategy lacked competitive advantage, was not sustainable and was highly vulnerable, suggesting that the existing broad-service competitors could easily match the new entrant’s pricing plan for their narrowly-focussed product, cross subsidising the cost from other profitable sectors of their business.

      Existing number portability and prompt registration depended strongly on co-operation from the existing competitors who would not be inclined to be so co-operative. The new entrant had no retail presence to provide direct customer service and assistance, yet would rely on consumers to phone in or email, then obtain their new SIM-cards by mail; the consumer would have to remove their existing SIM-card and install the new one. I also added that it is often difficult to provide outstanding customer service immediately from an initial start.

      The СКАЧАТЬ