Business Basics - Staying Competitive

To survive as an ongoing entity, a business must stay competitive. The free market dictates that if there is room for competition someone, some company, will try to squeeze their way in. That company, or new competition, won't stop there.

Competitors will always look for ways to take a bigger share of the market.

This is why, as a business, one must do as your competitors do, you always have to look for that edge. You want to find that competitive advantage. You have to keep an eye out for a way to stay one up on the competition.

This post takes a broad look at how business operations influence the competitiveness of a business.

Business Competitiveness

The competitiveness of a business refers to how effectively a business or organization meets the needs and wants of their target market in comparison to their competition.

There are 10 basic areas of business operations that yield themselves as opportunities to stay competitive. Below I have lusted these ten competitive areas of business operations

10 Competitive Areas of Business Operations
  1. Product and Service Design - The design of a product or service can have a large impact on how competitive a business is when compared to their peers. Every detail can have a big influence on how a consumer thinks or feels about your product in comparison to your competitors.
  2. Costs - A companies management of costs is a huge factor in the competitiveness of any one business comparison to it's peers or competitors. If costs are to high then that firms margins or that firms price will suffer and the competitor will have an opportunity to exploit the issue whether by reducing their price to a level that the you will not be able to compete or simply by doing nothing and raking in the big margins until it feels it needs to exploit the competitive advantage that it has looming in the shadows.
  3. Location - Location, location location. Location is a huge factor in the competitive world. How convenient is your location relative to your competitor. How much more or less are you paying for a certain location compared to your competitor. 
  4. Quality - The quality of your service or product is a big factor for obvious reasons. The factor of quality really comes to the forefront when you compare the cost difference to the consumer. Is the extra quality worth the increase in cost that the client must pay?
  5. Response - How quickly a company can respond to new opportunities and developments with in a industry will have a huge impact on how competitive that business is and becomes
  6. Agility - the agility of a company in terms of response to consumer wants and concerns will have a large impact o that companies competitiveness
  7. Inventory - How efficient a company is at maintaining inventory levels will effect many variables such as price, wait time and the company product availability all of which will greatly impact the firms ability to stay competitive.
  8. Supply Chain - the management of the company supply chain ill effect the firms competitiveness and can even effect how competitive their competitors are able to be through contractual obligations and exclusivity agreements. The management of a supply chain can also have huge implications on the finance and overall financial matters of a company. This of course has a huge impact on a firms ability to stay competitive amidst a ever growing competitive landscape.
  9. Service - whether a company is a service or whether a company sells a physical product either way a company will have some degree of service that attaches itself to the primary product or service. this may bet the front line sales team or perhaps he consumers retail experience when shopping n the stores of the company. there is a lot that can happen from the moment a consumer steps in a store to that point of purchase and their is still more during the life of the product or service. Thus the overall servicing that a firm provides it's consumers has a tremendous effect on the competitiveness of a firm.
  10. Employees -  The behavior of a companies employees has many influences on the overall competitiveness of a firm.

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