Debriefing Questions for Round-3

Theme: COMPETENCIES AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Submitted By: Round 3 - Group 11 - Company: Erie; Industry: C134781

Vikalp Sinha PGP/24/310

Medha Jha PGP/24/098

Satvik Chandna PGP/24/052

Karishma Agrawal PGP/24/092

Sneha Singh PGP/24/472

In this assignment we examine the capabilities your company needs to develop to deliver
its strategy. At this point you have a vision, and you have a strategic direction. For example,
you might be saying, “We plan to be a high technology company. We will concentrate our
resources upon the High End, Performance, and Size segments. We will compete based
upon differentiation.” Or you might have decided to be in every segment and compete on
price, or any of a dozen other combinations of vision and strategy.

But what capabilities do you need to develop to execute your strategy? For example, it is
one thing to say, “We will compete on price”, and another to build a company that can
effectively compete on price and still produce a solid return for stakeholders.

Let’s relate two popular ideas, “Core Competence” and “Competitive Advantage”, to your
situation. You will find dozens of references to “Core Competence” (C.K. Prahalad and Gary
Hamel) and “Competitive Advantage” (Michael Porter) on the Internet.

You would use these competencies to develop competitive advantages. For example,
competencies in automation and human resources could lead to a competitive advantage in
cost leadership. Competencies in awareness, accessibility, and design could lead to a
competitive advantage built upon differentiation.

With this as background, present an argument for your teammates.

1. What are the top three competencies you believe necessary to execute your vision and
strategy?

2. What decisions do you need to make to develop these competencies?

3. How will they produce competitive advantage?

Answers:

1) We would try to focus on the following three core competencies:

a) Lower costs: We would try to reduce the production costs as much as
possible. This would include labour costs, material costs and administrative
costs. This would most definitely lead to high initial investments, but we
believe that, in the long run, those investments would be worth it
b) Listening to customers: We would try to engineer the products with the
specification as desired by our customers. This would not only help with the
sales, but also the overall rating.
c) Innovative mindset: Just tweaking the current products is not enough for our
customers. So, we would also be unveiling new products based on the
demand, to better serve the needs of our customers.
2) Decisions made:
a) Reducing manufacturing costs by using Artificial Intelligence in the lower
segments.
b) Further reducing manufacturing cost by buying supplies in bulk.
c) Reducing inventory costs by managing the production capacity to remain in
line with the inventory capacity.
d) Employing Design Thinking to come up with attractive solutions in the
premium segment.
e) Focussing on customer retention practices.
f) Training the support staff to solve customer queries quickly and efficiently.
3)
Economies of scale, efficient internal systems, and choosing the right geographic locations for
its manufacturing and storage units can create a comparative advantage. Getting supply-side
advantages gives us the purchasing power, which means we can transfer the savings to our
customers in the form of lower prices, driving the market share up.

Putting money into R&D and development of new products ensures competitors cannot easily
replicate or imitate our designs and products. This creates and economic moat, which will
ensure that our business will maintain its competitive advantage over our competitors, to protect
our long-term profits and market share. Combining it with cost competency will help us
outperform our competitors in profits.