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Home : International Project Management : Competition Is Much More Intense In A Specific Country
Competition Is Much More Intense In A Specific CountryCompetition Is Much More Intense In A Specific CountryCompetition impacts a company’s operations in terms of what products and services they offer. It also affects such areas as advertising. People get the impression that just because a project is not involved in competition that there is no impact. This is often not the case. Competitive pressures require responses and generate many activities by the managers and staff at the specific location. This then denies the use of the resources for the project. In one soft drink bottling company several major construction projects as well as IT efforts had to be postponed because the attention had to be given to ensuring customer satisfaction and in feeding the distribution channels. Headquarters may not be aware of the pressures that one location is feeling. Management may still insist that the project be done. ImpactThe above discussion pointed to the negative aspects of competition where projects are deferred or put on hold. There can be a positive impact. If, for example, a competitor adopts some technology or embarks on some project to expand their market share, then this is an opportunity for a new project. This happened recently with one retail chain that detected major store upgrades in the works at a competitor. It triggered a response to upgrade their stores—thereby preserving their share of the market. However, the situation can arise where the management in the field propose a new project in response to competitive pressure to headquarters. Headquarters may not be interested or willing to start the project. The local office is then left with trying to carry out smaller efforts to stem any damage. Only later does the management at headquarters wake up to find out the opportunity that was missed. PreventionHeadquarters management should take several proactive steps. First, they should encourage each location to undertake a regular competitive assessment. In some industries this should be done once a year. In other more aggressive settings it should be done more frequently. Headquarters should provide guidelines and training in how to generally go about this while leaving the detailed structure of the work to the individual location’s management. The second step is to encourage each location to submit ideas for new projects and efforts. Many times this is restricted to an annual basis. However, business changes much more dynamically so that a better approach is to do it on a quarterly basis. ActionIf there is a competitor who is getting more aggressive, then the local office can be encouraged to collect the information about this effort. Headquarters can then poll the other locations to find out what is going on. A concerted response can then be planned and taken in one or more locations 288
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