Karen Lee, Customer Experience at GBC, 3 min read
“When you use StratPlan in your business, you are empowered to select appropriate strategies to your company’s overall situation in under 5 minutes; making it simple for you to adapt your company strategies as needed”.
Did you know that a company’s competitive strategy deals exclusively with the specifics of management’s game plan for competing successfully? By management’s game plan I mean, its specific efforts to please its customers, strengthen its market position, counter the manoeuvres of rivals, respond ton shifting market conditions, and achieve a particular kind of competitive advantage. I’m sure you knew that, but did you also know that with StratPlan, you can conduct this examination in 5 minutes or less.
The chances are remote that that any two companies, even companies in the same industry, will employ competitive strategies that are alike in every detail. However, when you strip away the details to get at the real substance, the two biggest factors that distinguish one competitive strategy from another boil down to:
- Whether a company’s market target is broad or narrow; and
- Whether the company is pursuing a competitive advantage linked to lower cost or differentiation.
The two factors give rise to five competitive strategy options.
- A low-cost provider strategy
- A broad differentiation strategy
- A focused low-cost strategy
- A focused differentiation strategy
- A best-cost provider strategy
Deciding which generic competitive strategy should serve as the framework on which to hang the rest of your company’s strategy is not a trivial matter. Each of the five generic competitive strategies will position your company differently in the market and competitive environment. Each will establish a central theme for how your company will endeavour to out-compete rivals. Each creates some boundaries or guidelines for manoeuvring as market circumstances unfold as ideas to improve the strategy is debated.
Understanding just how important the five generic strategies is to strategic planning in your business, we have made delineation simple in StratPlan.
When you use StratPlan in your business, you are empowered to select appropriate strategies to your company’s overall situation in under 5 minutes; making it simple for you to adapt your company strategies as needed. There are just a few steps when developing strategies using StratPlan…6 to be exact.
- Click “Generic Strategies” on the navigation screen.
- Click “Cost Leadership” and then use the check boxes to select all factors that are relevant to your business.
- Click “Differentiation” and then use the check boxes to select all factors that are relevant to your business.
- Click “Focus” and then use the check boxes to select all factors that are relevant to your business.
- Click “Next” to select from our database of generic strategies.
- Click “Add New” to add custom strategies.
That’s it…you’re done! In under 5 minutes.
Here’s how it works…
6 steps. All you need to do is click Generic Strategies, select from the pre-input menu and add anything specific to your company, as necessary. 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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