The Competitive Edge
Competing on cost, speed, quality, and flexibility to become a winner.
What’s your competitive edge? What makes you or your business the “one” to beat?
If you’re like most businesses, you probably say that you’re good at what you do or that you’re better than anyone else in your craft. That’s all well and good, but why should clients care?
Here’s the thing: Clients don’t care about you or your business.
They only care about themselves and what you or your company can do for them. This approach makes sense since clients want as much value as they can get, but they don’t typically care where they get it.
What can you or your organization do to position yourselves to be the best? Here are four considerations:
Cost
Reducing operating costs will provide you with a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Relentlessly pursue the removal of all waste in your organization to reduce operating costs. Look at the entire cost structure of your organization for all potential cost-reduction areas. And don’t forget to pursue Lean production in all you do.
Speed
Make sure you can deliver on your promises quickly and by no later than promised due dates. You can improve the speed of delivery by improving your organization’s communications capabilities (think: Technology) and using the reliable and right equipment for the job. In addition, ensure you have knowledgeable workers to assist with your projects. And use just-in-time production to reduce inventories and reduce risk.
Quality
While some companies employ quality as a reaction to the marketplace, to compete on quality means that you and your organization use it to please the customer and not just a way to avoid problems. Furthermore, since quality is different for each customer, you and your organization need to understand your customers’ needs, wants, and requirements to translate them into exact specifications for their desired goods and services.
Flexibility
Competing on flexibility means that your organization can adjust to market changes relating to its product mix, volume, or design. This flexibility means producing a variety of goods or services within the same facility to meet customized requests. Multi-skilled workers and excess capacity in the business can help an organization compete on flexibility.
Most organizations should start positioning themselves in the market by focusing first on quality. Then, once you perfect your product or service quality, focus on speed of delivery, cost-cutting in operations, and flexibility.
If your organization is not as competitive as you believe it should be, improving all of the above competitive advantages may be in order.
As you become more competitive, you will find that you will reach a point where you will need a trade-off between being better in one or another area. This trade-off will ultimately set you apart from your competition.
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