Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Lincoln's greatest strengths is the ability to track and process competitor's
data and then relate it to their own data, further strengthening their own
product and marketing plans. Being able to monitor what a competitor is
up to requires a combination of smart technology and techniques.
Competitor Analysis
Competitive analysis serves a useful purpose. It helps organizations devise
their strategic plans and gives them insight into how to craft their per-
formance indicators. The philosophy behind Combustion Engineering's
technique (Conference Board 1988) is that information coupled with the
experience of a seasoned industry manager is more than adequate to take
the place of expensive experts in the field of competitive analysis.
The goal behind Combustion Engineering's technique is to analyze one
competitor at a time to identify strategies and predict future moves. The
key difference between this technique and others is the level of involve-
ment of senior managers of the firm. In most companies, research is dele-
gated to staff that prepare a report on all competitors at once. Combustion
Engineering's method is to gather the information on one competitor, and
then use senior managers to logically deduce the strategy of the competi-
tor in question.
Combustion Engineering uses a five-step approach to performing com-
petitive analyses:
Step 1.
Preliminary meeting
: Once the competitor is chosen, a pre-
liminary meeting is scheduled. It should be attended by all senior
managers who might have information or insight to contribute con-
cerning this competitor. This includes the CEO as well as the gen-
eral manager and managers from sales, marketing, finance, and
manufacturing. A broader array of staff attending is important to
this technique, because it serves to provide access to many diverse
sources of information. This permits the merger of external informa-
tion sources as well as internal sources collected by the organization,
such as documents, observations, and personal experiences.
At this meeting, it is agreed that all attendees spend a specified
amount of time collecting more recent information about a competi-
tor. At this time, a second meeting is scheduled in which to review
this more recent information.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search