The competitive analysis mode.l A new approach to strategic development for small businesses, страница 6

Finally one example of one of these benchmarks for the convenience food sub-sector, namely, the nature of the product, is presented in Figure 16.

Conclusions

The work of CAM indicates that there is a clear need for this type of research into the strategic drivers of successful small firms and the desirability of such firms having objective strategic benchmarks. This need is demonstrated through:

• the sustained interest and support of participating firms;
• the increase in the number of participating firms, from 374 firms in 1995 to 893 firms in 1997;
• the support of government at the regional and European levels; and
• the continuing interest and support of the press and other media.

Like any other database major determinants of its utility and robustness are:

• Its scale of operations. CAM has 320 separate data items on an average of 600 firms for a period of three years. This makes the CAM database one of the largest small firm strategy databases available.
• The quality of the data. Initially the CAM questionnaires are personally administered and subsequently by telephone and, in addition, the questionnaires have been designed to ensure an absence of ambiguity and checks for errors in the data have been included.
• The modest predictions. CAM really provides strategic benchmarks rather than mathematical predictions. These benchmarks are designed to enable the coalition around any firm to debate its performance relative to the other firms in the leagues in which it operates.

The future of CAM

CAM is embryonic. Although it has been developed in just one region of Europe – Ireland – its principles are generic and apply with equal validity in any region. Subject to the availability of suitable partners CAM intends to “roll out” this research into other regions. This process will have two major virtues. First, the extension of the number and variety of firms in the database will enable the benchmarking to be based upon a much larger and heterogeneous sample with the attendant benefits in confidence in its results. Second, it will bring the fruits of this research to a much wider constituency and so help build what is often the key to substantial industrial development in any region, namely clusters of growing and commercially strong small firms.

Notes

1.  The meaning of human performance can take many forms: for example, performance at sport, financial performance, social performance, etc. However, in this article human performance is assumed to mean health performance or how healthy a person is.

2.  A firm’s strategic peers are those firms which are similarily structured irrespective of the industry in which they operate. “Similarly structured” generally means: similar competitive position, similar capital structure and capacity utilisation and competing in similarly structured markets. In the case of CAM a firm’s strategic peer is considered to be any firm in the database – they are similar in that no constituent firm has more than 110 employees – irrespective of its industry.

3.  External stakeholders are considered to be: development agencies, consultants and banks.

4.  It should be noted that for reasons of confidentiality the name of the firm has been changed and significant aspects of the data have been altered.

5.  Although the word “firm” is used, it should be borne in mind that the other external stakeholders mentioned, i.e. development agencies, consultants and banks, would also, of course, have interest in such benchmarks.

6.  In Figures 2, 3 and 4 on occasions it may be the case that a bar representing the “Relative to Median” position may be missing. This is because in these situations the median has a value of zero.