The previous post in this EkaLore series “Caught in the middle” discussed changing preferences of middle management for projects that don’t provide near term benefit. This post step considers what opportunities this will provide for enterprise competition.
A competitive strategy for enterprises with longer horizons or resources will position to take advantage of competitors’ weaknesses. Enterprise can anticipate changes in markets due to lack of investment. Enterprises will see competitors with less product innovation, less marketspace agility, and lower pricing power. A key investment strategy can focus limited cash on an identified future competitor weakness.
EkaLore has written elsewhere about investing in sales relationships and market positions during high stress periods. The spend to pursue these investments are just as critical as investing in technology or facilities.
Identifying opportunities created by global changes can be simple (understanding logistics and feedstock costs disproportionately affecting East Asian production) to complex (competitors’ global operations being graded internally by a specific currency). The strategic agility needed by enterprises will start from the middle managers with close expertise on their competitors. The supporting analysis and specific plans’ flexibility will be executed by those managers closest to customers and competitors. Analyzing competitors and building for future competition needs to be done now even as pressures build.
Planning to use investment cash to improve a marketspace competitive position is distinct from usual analysis and justification. The effects changing competition are wider than of moving one metric “thermometer value” up/down (like direct cost, overhead, or R&D spend). The justification will include knowledge (and guesses) about competitors and current expectations of local enterprise plans. The decisions will be made with expectations for future costs, sales, tactics, and talent. Enterprises targeting investment to future competitive positions will be rewarded.
You can read the first two posts in this series at www.ekalore.com/ARS
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