Competition Is Much More Intense In A Specific Country
Competition 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.
Impact
The 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.
Prevention
Headquarters 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.
Action
If 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
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