There are three things you must know, if you want to be competitive and stay in control in your daily marketing activities:
- Your customer and his/her business
- Your own products, services, capabilities, and limitations
- Your competitors’ products, services, capabilities, limitations and maybe most important, their tactics.
To assist you in performing competitive analysis it can be helpful to have a model to use. One of these models was developed by the IBM Consulting Group. In this model the key factors to be analyzed about a competitor are:
- Strategy – The model begins its analysis with the competitor’s strategy. This section covers their overall approach to the market. It can include information such as their vision, short and long-term strategies, key mergers and alliances, and the decision-making process.
- Market Model – The market model includes their market image and positioning, their growth and customer satisfaction. It also incorporates target accounts, the company’s advertising and promotion strategy, and their account management strategies.
- Delivery Model – The delivery model describes how the company delivers value to its customers. This section covers the management system and organization, its industry focus, its services lines and its project management capability.
- Intellectual Capital – The strengths and weaknesses of the personnel as well as the R&D expenditures are documented here. In addition it captures the methods that the competitor uses to learn from its previous engagements.
- Infrastructure – Included in infrastructure is the competitor’s investment in I/T and administrative systems, proprietary methodologies, communications systems and software tools.
- People – An overview of their people includes the size and skills of their staff, their recruiting strategy, promotion and turnover policy, and training.
- Financial Performance – The final aspect of the model is the measure of the competitor’s success in the marketplace: its financial performance over time. The usual financial measures can be included here (revenue, net income, CGR, etc.). Also, when available, information on their services business revenue and project backlog are useful measures.