Karen, Strategy Specialist at GBC, 2 min read
Did you know that companies in the same strategic group can resemble one another in a variety of ways? I’m sure you knew that but did you also know that with StratPlan, you can plot your strategic group of rival companies that have similar competitive approaches and market positions in under 4 minutes. By far, the most widely and powerful tool used for plotting and evaluating rival positioning in the market is Strategic Group Maps. When sellers pursue similar strategies, and have similar markets positions, they are essentially a strategic group. So, a strategic group can be defined as a cluster of industry rivals that have similar competitive approaches and market positions.
The value of strategic group maps is mainly this: As a business owner, manager, or CEO you can identify which industry members are close rivals and which are distant rivals. The second thing that you can glean out of strategic group mapping is that not all positions on the map are attractive and that’s mainly because of two reasons:
- Prevailing competitive pressures from the industry’s five forces may cause the profit potential of different strategic groups to vary; and
- Industry driving forces may favour some strategic groups and hurt others.
Understanding just how important strategic group mapping is to strategic planning, we have made strategic mapping simple in StratPlan.
When you use StratPlan in your business, you are empowered to evaluate your rivals’ market positions in under 4 minutes; making it simple for you to adapt your company direction as needed. There are just a few steps when mapping your strategic group using StratPlan…6 to be exact.
- Click Strategic Group Maps on the navigation screen.
- Use the drop-down menu to select Low, Medium or High for Price/Perceived Quality and Image.
- Use the drop-down menu to select Local, Regional, National or International for Geographic Market Scope.
- Insert estimated market share in percentage.
- Click “Add New” and type in your first rival company name.
- Use the drop-down menu to select Price/Perceived Quality and Image; Geographic Market Scope and estimated Market Share.
Click “Add New” and repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 for ay many rivals as you like. But we suggest adding no more than five of your closest rivals.
That’s it…you’re done! In under 4 minutes.
Here’s how it works…
6 steps. All you need to do is click Strategic Group Maps, select from the pre-input menu and add your best estimate of the market share the company owns. Here’s a secret too. You don’t even need to click “Save” to save your plan. StratPlan automatically saves your changes.
P.S. Curious about other features to help in the strategy making process? Go to our useful help videos or send us a message, we’d love to help.
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