How will you compete with other companies?

Question

What decision making tools and techniques will you use to compete with other electronic companies? How can you be on top of the electronic businesses? In what ways can you stay on top.

Answer 1

You constantly do research on industry trends and competitor data. It's an ongoing process that should always be part of your budget and business plan.

You know your business far better than we do. So, only you can judge what the best tools & techniques would be.

I have had sales people report on what they encounter in the field. Customer service compiles feedback from clients. Examine industry trade publications for emerging trends and use them to make changes to your product/service line. Examine local papers and magazines for sales information. Check out competitor web-sites and catalogs. And, look at your demographic and be aware of the types of things they are buying - adjust your purchasing and sales accordingly.

If your company has a marketing/advertising staff member, this should be part of their job.

Answer 2

In today's fast changing world, Research & Development is the key to stay ahead of competition.

New Technologies & new products based on these can come only by investing more in R&D. But please remember, 95% of the R&D work may not lead to a successful product - so you must be a giant corporation like Sony or Nokia or Microsoft to enable to spend so much and be prepared to write off quite a bit.

Microsoft has reported that it will increase its R&D budget from last year's $3.87 billion to $4.5 billion in 2007. Texas Instruments plans to increase R&D spending to $1.7 billion this year from $1.6 billion.

Lucent aims to keep its R&D budget at about 11% of revenue even as the company overall makes $2 billion in cuts.

The Chinese companies - hitherto known as "cheap imitators" - are increasing their R&D to move ahead of Japan in investments in this area. Only the US will be spending more.

Those who come out with good fresh ideas can dictate to the rest of the manufacturing world. For example why should cell phones operate at 2.4 GHz (microwave oven) frequency? Why not 2.8 GHz or 3.0 GHz? It is just because the very first company decided on that and others had to follow suit.

This automatically takes the company to the Leading position.