CoMPETITIvE InTELLIGEnCE
■■ Scenarios
■■ War gaming
We will briefly discuss each of these approaches.
The simplest form of competitor analysis, called SWOT, involves evaluating an individual competitor. SWOT is an acronym that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Taught widely in business schools, SWOT is a sequence of steps taken to analyze a competitor. The idea is to start with an environmental scan (described below) in which you find out (or take what you know) about a competitor and go through the four analysis steps listed. You evaluate the competitor’s strengths (e.g., brand, distribution, sales) and weaknesses (e.g., high cost structure, weak Internet presence) and use that information to find opportunities for your firm in the marketplace and to recognize threats posed by the competitor’s capabilities.
For many firms, particularly those without CI capabilities, SWOT analysis is the sum total of their competitor intelligence. The SWOT format is also a useful way to present results to non-quantitative managers, even when you use much more sophisticated analyses.
The input to SWOT analysis is a competitor profile, that is, a current dossier about the competitor. Much of this information, such as the mission statement, can be obtained from the competitor’s Web site and, if it is a public company, from its 10K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
There are other details that may not be as public and require research on your part. What are their patents, trademarks, and brand? What products do they offer, and what is the product quality, level of after-sale service, and method of distribution? What is the measure of their customer loyalty? In what locations do they dominate or lag? How do they source and outsource? Who are their managers, and how do they make decisions? What are their financial strengths and weaknesses?
Profiles need to be kept up to date and should include firms that are potential competitors even if they are not currently in your space. As you profile competitors, be sure to honestly assess their success factors and compare them to your enterprise’s strengths and weaknesses.
No, environmental scanning does not refer to determining whether the surroundings are green enough. Unlike SWOT, which deals with individual competitors, environmental scanning is about understanding what is going on in the world both inside and outside your industry. It is best performed continually. Environmental scans study the macro environment, including the economy, government actions and finances, the impact of legal decisions, demographics and attitudes, labor supplies and materials sources, and the impacts of internal and external stakeholders. Perhaps the most widely used environmental scanning model is PEST. Modeling and PeST/STeePLeD
PEST (political, economic, social, technological) analysis models macro-environmental factors. PEST is often extended to include combinations of legal, environmental, education, and demographic factors, in which case the acronym is extended. If all are used, the acronym becomes STEEPLED. The choice of factors depends on the skill set of the firm, its environment, and the funds available for the analysis.
PEST is not the only modeling technique. Some firms use Porter’s Five Forces model (Porter, 1998); others
(particularly in marketing) use conjoint analysis models. The latter is a statistical technique for determining how people value different features that make up an individual product or service. The objective of conjoint analysis is to determine the trade-offs in what combination of a limited number of attributes is most influential on respondent choice or decision making. Software is available from SAS (http://support.sas.com/resources/ papers/tnote/tnote_marketresearch.html).
Industry analysis is a form of environmental scanning but is limited to studies of individual industries. For most industries, detailed reports are available for a fee from consulting firms. These are usually much more cost-effective than trying to do the whole job yourself. Keeping up with the trade press is also useful.
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