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Competitive Advantage Questionnaire

Why

Operating in a competitive environment to obtain and maintain a competitive advantage in organisation, technology, product or service quality represents the main challenge for your business.

Although all aspects are interconnected, is there a hierarchy? Are there aspects that can influence subsequent ones?

Where and when to dedicate resources in order to have a lasting sustainability return?

Survey

This questionnaire aims to classify the main aspects that fuel competitive advantage in a competitive environment.

The questionnaire is completely anonymous and the data is processed only in aggregate form.
WeYourConsult undertakes not to provide any information taken from individual questionnaires.

Thank you for your cooperation.

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The variables

The questionnaire takes into consideration ten possible variables that can influence the development of competitive advantage. They are not exhaustive and we invite you to include useful comments and considerations for a better understanding of the topic.

Which element can influence another?

What is the right recipe for my context?

How to calibrate the different aspects?

Collaboration

Ability of an organization to create groups of active participation of its members, to carry out activities and achieve shared objectives.

Skills

Organizational skills are usually broken down by role and represent the ability to cope with a task or set of tasks. It’s not enough to KNOW, you need to know how to DO.

Knowledge

It is practical information based on the understanding and awareness of a TOPIC by one or more people.

Control

Periodic measurement of performance, achieved objectives and key results.
Indicators that can be combined for the organization as a whole, its areas, groups (teams, squads) or for the role covered by the individual.

Culture

Quality, innovation and customer-oriented corporate culture is essential for success through:

customer orientation, understanding needs and providing personalized service;
innovation, investing in research and development, thinking outside the box and finding solutions to problems;
high quality of products and services.

Finance

It guarantees the availability of resources and sources of investment for the implementation of development projects or to acquire skills external to the organization.

Training

The support to be provided to employees/collaborators to facilitate commitment and motivation to achieve organizational objectives, through training, coaching, mentoring.

Leadership

Able to create a strong and motivating corporate culture:

communicating the organization’s vision and goals clearly and concisely
creating a work environment where employees feel appreciated and valued;
providing employees with the resources and training needed to succeed;
recognizing and rewarding employees for their achievements.

Human resources

The ability to attract and manage human resources, a central element for any development and change.

Strategy

Ability to view the context by planning the actions to be carried out, verifying and correcting the strategy in place as conditions change.

How the levers of Competitive Advantage are perceived in your reality?

If you are interested in understanding how specific variables in your organization are perceived, a customized survey can be carried out.

READ HERE

Make or Buy

Tool

to document and explain the hypotheses with objective elements and to be able to compare them

MAKE or BUY?

Choice planned in a broader strategic and organizational development horizon, or suffered?

BREAK-EVEN

What is the Quantity that makes the choice indifferent?

In a manufacturing company (but the same principles can also be applied in a service company) deciding whether to produce or turn to an external supplier is not an easy choice.

To simplify, we can think of a company that sells and markets a machine with a product development, industrialization and production structure.

Beyond a series of raw materials and components, which for obvious reasons of economy of scale or skills not present cannot be the subject of the evaluation (for example for small metal parts or hydraulic components) there may be some categories on which to concentrate the analyses.

Decisions can depend on different aspects, such as, for example:

quantities needed in a certain period;
the necessary skills;
the level of investments made or to be made;
production or procurement times;
transport costs;
the availability of alternatives;
belonging to a group of elements recognized as a distinctive critical factor;
the market context;
the need for flexibility;
the hypotheses of change of some variables (both internal and external) in the medium and long term.

The list shown is certainly not exhaustive, but it is useful for understanding that there are no mathematical formulas that can give a certain answer, decreeing the best decision to make.

A company that wants to be proactive and not be subjected to external conditions, it is useful to periodically start discussion processes that can help make investment and divestment decisions.

Every decision, especially if it has a strong impact on modifying the organizational structure, should be taken by activating subjects (internal, external) who can make a contribution, also supplementing the analyzes with objective elements.

The “Make or Buy” model

The model is in the series of “MAKE of BUY” and the break-even point is displayed through the BREAK-EVEN diagram.

Input

The first part of the template (sheet ‘Analysis’) allows you to enter the variables:

description of the item, component or semi-finished product;
period of time to which the analysis refers, year, quarter or month;
quantity;
production costs (from bill of materials) such as – for example – raw materials, direct labour;
variable production costs for the expected quantity;
part of the absorbed or eliminated fixed production costs;
total price in the case of purchase from an external supplier.

Calculations

In the section relating to the calculations, the costs in the two hypotheses are compared, evaluating the different trends as the quantities vary.

In the final part the draw quantity is highlighted.

Break-even diagram

In the example shown, you can see the variation in cost trends as the purchase price varies for 50,000 units:

Price = 8 Quantity = 15.150

Price = 7 Quantity = 26.700

That is, the more the purchase price is reduced, the smaller the gap separating the alternatives.

Model Limits

The model has limits dictated by some hypotheses which may not necessarily correspond to reality.

For example, the diagram expects the cost trend to be linear, but in reality, as volumes change, it could have a curvilinear or stepped trend. It should therefore be kept in mind that the differences highlighted must lead to significant deviations to justify a structural change.

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