James | Strategist at GBC | October, 14
In evaluating how well your company’s present strategy is working, the best way to start is a with clear view of what your strategy entails. The first thing to examine is your company’s competitive approach. What moves has your company made recently to attract customers and improve its market position – for instance, did you cut prices, improve the design of your products, added new features, stepped up advertising, entered a new geographic market whether domestic or foreign, or perhaps merged with a competitor? Are you striving for a competitive advantage based on low costs or a better product offering? Are you concentrating your business on serving a broad spectrum of customers or a narrow market niche? Your company’s functional strategies in Research & Development, production, marketing, finance, human resources, information technology, and so on further characterize your company’s strategy, as do any efforts to establish competitive valuable alliances or partnerships with other enterprises.
The three best indicators of well your company’s strategy is working are (1) whether your company is achieving its stated financial and strategic objectives, (2) whether your company’s financial performance is above the industry average, and (3) whether it is gaining customers and increasing its market share. Persistent shortfalls in meeting your company performance targets and weak marketplace performance relative to rivals are reliable warning signs that your company has a weak strategy or suffers from poor strategy execution or both.
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