Competitive Outlook

Overview

Regardless of your position in the competitive equation, there are competitive forces that can impact your market ability. Your competitors ultimate goal is to grow, at your expense if necessary. Anti-trust laws were enacted NOT to promote your business, but to stimulate your market share decline. The rational behind these laws is that the government must protect the consumer's interests at the expense of companies competitively unfit to fulfill their market obligations. Abundant legal cases depict companies doing everything within the legal frameworks to capture business from opponents.

No Company or industry is insulated from these laws and their related constraints. Every industry is seeing innovative approaches towards competition. How a company competes dictates its prospects of success. A Company with static and obsolete methods of competing is destined for failure.

Today's technologies have brought down entry barriers that were insurmountable less than five years ago. These technologies, coupled with the fast exchange and management of information and newer and efficient methods of distribution, prompt even the most capable companies to be constantly on their guards.

This white paper briefly showcases Softium's role in fostering innovative approaches to competition within your industry. Regardless of your company or your industry's contribution to the overall economy, Softium intends to facilitate your competitive task and prevent you from succumbing to the harsh realities of the market place.

For practical purposes, a fictitious company is being highlighted in order to expose potential real world competitive ramifications.

This is a simulated case study designed to help you understand the powerful values that can be delivered to you and to your customers by Softium Intelligent Office. Since no two organizations compete alike even within the same industry, some of the values presented here would be extremely critical to one company and of little or no interest to an other and vice versa. Softium Intelligent Office users are encouraged to use its powerful flexibility to emphasize the values that are most relevant to them while considering adopting other values in order to improve their market shares and raise their bottom lines.

Case Study

Company Profile

Openheimer Industries is located in Anaheim, California. It manufactures electronic devices used by many industries and government agencies. The company's customer spectrum includes fortune 500 corporation, state and federal government and medium size organizations. Mr. Jack Openheimer founded the company in 1977. The company currently employs 200 employees and had $ 85 million in sales in 1997. The company plans to open another production facility with more product capability to capitalize on increased demand and the evolving technology. The company has its own R&D Unit composed of 3 researchers and 5 technicians.

Current competitive gaps and how they can be overcome by deploying Softium Intelligent Office

Assumptions about competitors

One of the most common beliefs in business is that all competitors are doing business the same way, since all of them are subject to the same industry's rules and constraints. Competitors have no regards for Openheimeir's well being, the capital it has invested, its responsibility to shareholders and so forth. Suppose a new competitor moves in. Openheimer's management is thinking, "Great! This player will help increase demand for our product and industry." Later, much later, Openheimer finds out that a good percentage of its market share has been lured by this new competitor. With Softium Intelligent office, Openheimer would have discovered that this competitor never intended to limit itself to the niche it had originally announced. Appropriate measures would have been implemented to prevent the company from incurring irreversible and expensive damages.

Failure to anticipate disruptive moves by the competitors. Imagine that Openheimer's management asks its R&D to design a certain product for a specific market. It then orders its personnel department to mobilize the labor required to carry out the production. Also, it asks its purchasing department to secure the raw materials and supplies necessary for production. The marketing department is instructed to design a top-notch campaign to introduce the product with fanfare. Finally the product launch is underway. So far, Openheimer has invested tremendous and valuable resources based on superficial market research and mostly assumptions and feelings that the market will react favorably to this product. Regrettably, Openheimer failed to see that one of its competitors is introducing a similar product competing for the same market segment. Except that the rival product is using a superior technology and is offered at a lower price. Softium Intelligent Office is equipped with powerful features that can keep track of every R&D move by the competition. With Softium Intelligent Office, Openheimer would have spotted any competitive behavior intended to disrupt its new product introduction plans and would have maneuvered appropriately.

Indifference to rivals' weaknesses

One of the factors Openheimer must consider if it is serious about its market share is to identify its competitor's weaknesses and hit them hard. Softium Intelligent Office can assist Openheimer unearth vital competitor weaknesses that it can incorporate in its daily decisions and strategic goals.

Inability to detect surprises

Most business surprises are unpleasant. With Softium Intelligent Office, Openheimer can not abort all the surprises that come its way. Nonetheless, it can reduce them to manageable levels. Furthermore, if Openheimer waits for its competitors to attack its market, its reactions could be too little too late and they may not succeed. Even if they succeed, they would be expensive. Softium Intelligent can help Openheimer industries detect that a danger exists before it materializes, enabling it to formulate defenses (counterattacks) based on the particular data of the threat.

Failure to learn from competitors' mistakes

A competitor decides to enter an allegedly lucrative market segment. After sustaining heavy losses, the competitor withdraws and cut its losses. Did Openheimer know why the competitor has failed? Did it record all the details while the project was being carried out by the competitor? Did it document the antagonist forces that have driven the competitor into submission? All these questions and countless others could be answered had Openheimer adopted Softium Intelligent office. At worst, Openheimer would avoid pursuing the project in question. At best, Openheimer would have all the information at its management's fingertips to be used for the formulation of a successful entry.

Failure to develop and maintain competitive advantages

An unsustainable competitive advantage is not an advantage. Openheimer has developed competitive advantages in the past, only to see them rendered irrelevant or adopted by competitors, thus no longer advantaged. Softium Intelligent Office is designed to help companies like Openheimer cultivate and sustain their competitive advantages.

Failure to develop and maintain entry barriers.

Every year, Openheimer spends large resources in order to capture a targeted market segment. All these efforts would be in vain should Openheimer ignore the fact that new entrants are hovering and can strike at any time. Indeed new entrants may deploy competitive weapons, such as more production, lower prices, different product and service features and so forth to reduce Openheimer's market share and profitability. Openheimer can erect solid and hard to reach entry barriers thanks to Softium Intelligent Office.

Failure to involve its personnel in the competitive effort.

One of the most fundamental weapons Openheimer possesses in its competitive quest is its personnel. Nothing happens without the involvement of personnel. With various backgrounds, expertise and responsibility, personnel at Openheimer and companies like it can use the network features of Softium Intelligent Office to harness and share competitive data to make department and corporate decisions that can improve the company's market situation.

Ignoring its values.

Openheimer bases its product offer on similar competitors' offers irrespective of what values the customers are expected to derive. This is because Openheimer lacks a mechanism to formulate a value-based offer. Softium Intelligent office can assist Openheimer unearth generic product or service performance benefits that are then converted into financial achievements.

Inability to properly price its values.

In addition to identifying its values, Openheimer is now able to price those values. Otherwise Openheimer will base its price on its costs or the competitor's costs which both lead the company to generate much lower revenues, thus forfeiting hard-to-recover revenues.

Conclusion

The above scenarios are just a fraction of what Softium Intelligent can achieved for you and for your customers. A vast amount of competitive power is included in this application that can make your organization a reputable competitor.