A.
Competitor analysis framework
Faced with a large pile of financial data, market information, and a variety of other information, how to rationalize and filter this information, how to analyze the competitors is an important issue in front of the enterprise's intelligence workers.
The author believes that the establishment of a competitor analysis framework is very important. The cluttered information in accordance with the establishment of a good framework for classification, so that you can avoid the blindness of the intelligence work, targeted collection of competitors' information. Here are three frameworks for competitor analysis.
1. Competitor Analysis Framework Based on Balanced Scorecard
The balanced scorecard examines the performance of a company from four aspects, learning and innovation, internal business processes, customers and markets, and finance. Since the Balanced Scorecard can be used to examine a company's performance, the same idea of the Balanced Scorecard can be used to analyze competitors.
The following table is an example of analyzing a competitor using the Balanced Scorecard.
It just gives a framework for analyzing competitors, and does not list all the indicators for analysis. Enterprises can choose the indicators according to the key success factors of their own industry, and then analyze their competitors. And the choice of weights in the indicators also needs to be mastered by the enterprises themselves.
In the above framework, some information is publicly available, such as market and financial information, while some information is more difficult to obtain, such as information about an organization's internal business processes. The best way to analyze the internal business process aspect is to use the benchmarking approach to do so. Benchmarking
(Benchmarking), also called benchmarking or reference management. This management method was pioneered by Xerox in the late 70s, and then systematized and standardized by the U.S. Productivity and Quality Center. According to a study in the United States in 1997, nearly 90% of the world's top 500 companies in 1996 applied benchmarking management in their daily management, including AT&T, Kodak, Ford, IBM, Xerox and so on. The basic idea of benchmarking management is to benchmark the performance and practice measures of the strongest competing companies or those leading and most prestigious companies in the industry in terms of products, services or processes, and to set up a target for learning and catching up. Through a series of standardized procedures, such as data collection, comparative analysis, tracking and learning, redesign and implementation, the actual situation of the enterprise and these benchmarks are quantitatively compared and evaluated, and on this basis, the best strategy to improve the performance of the enterprise is selected, in an effort to catch up with or surpass the competitors. China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), in order to further enhance the core competitiveness of the enterprise, chose Statoil as a benchmark for benchmarking. This is the first time for Chinese enterprises to select a large foreign company to carry out benchmark management in an all-round way. Statoil was founded in 1972 and ranked 14th among the world's oil companies, while CNOOC ranked about 50th. Statoil has a lot of similarities with CNOOC in its development history, and the gap between CNOOC and it is very big, so there is a certain degree of comparability. This is one of the reasons why CNOOC chose Statoil as a benchmarking target. Through benchmarking management CNOOC's management level and core competitiveness have been greatly improved. Benchmarking provides a good way and method for enterprises to analyze competitors' internal business processes and find out the gap with competitors.
2. Porter's Competitor Analysis Model
In Porter's book "Competitive Strategy", a model of competitor analysis is proposed, which analyzes competitor's behavior and reaction pattern from four aspects: enterprise's current strategy, future goals, competitive strength and self-assumption.
The analysis of future goals shows what drives competitors forward. In the common goal systems used by companies, the goals of analyzing competitors are mostly financial. Here we should not only understand its financial goals, but also its goals in other aspects, such as responsibility to society, environmental protection, technological leadership and other aspects of goal setting. At the same time, the objectives are hierarchical, to understand the objectives of the head office, but also to understand the objectives of the various business units, and even the corresponding objectives of the functional departments.
Analysis of current strategies shows what competitors are doing now and what they can do in the future. Strategies adopted by competitors are listed and analyzed with due diligence so that the business can respond effectively and in a timely manner.
Competitive strength analysis can identify the gap between the enterprise and its competitors, and find out the enterprise's advantages and disadvantages in the market competition, so as to better improve their own work.
Analysis of competitors' assumptions about themselves and about the industry gives a clear picture of the competitor's strategic positioning of itself and its forecast of the industry's future prospects. Competitors' assumptions about themselves and about the industry are either correct or incorrect, and by grasping these assumptions, one can find opportunities for development from them, thus placing this enterprise in a favorable position in the competition.
3. Competitiveness monitoring system developed by China Business Newspaper
Competitiveness monitoring system of enterprises developed by China Business Newspaper also provides a relatively perfect analytical framework for competitor analysis. In this set of enterprise competitiveness monitoring system, two sets of indicator systems have been set up, one is the analytical indicator system and the other is the display indicator system. The display indicator system is the performance of the competitiveness of the enterprise, and the analytical indicator system is the reason for the competitiveness of the enterprise. Enterprises can establish the indicator system for analyzing their competitors according to the characteristics of their own industry and with reference to the competitiveness monitoring system. About the competitiveness monitoring index system of the discussion, in the China Business News and Mr. Jin Beibei edited the Chinese enterprise competitiveness report - the nature and source of competitiveness of the book made a detailed discussion, this article will not repeat.
II.
The main content of competitor analysis
The above introduction is the framework of competitor analysis, which provides a way for enterprises to think about, the following is the introduction of several main methods of competitor analysis.
1. Competitor's market share analysis
Market share is usually expressed as the ratio of a company's sales volume to the overall capacity of the market.
The purpose of analyzing competitors' market share is to identify competitors and the position of the company in the market.
Analysis of market share not only to analyze the industry, competitors and the enterprise's overall market share of the situation, but also to analyze the market segments of competitors is the share of the situation.
Analyzing the overall market share is to clarify the position of the enterprise and competitors compared to the enterprise? Is it a market leader, a follower or a player in the market.
Analysis of market share of market segments is to clarify in which market area or which products are competitive, in that area or that product in the market competition is at a disadvantage, so as to provide the basis for the enterprise to develop a specific competitive strategy.
2. Competitor's financial analysis
Competitor's financial analysis mainly includes profitability analysis, growth analysis and debt analysis, cost analysis and so on.
Competitor profitability analysis. Profitability is usually used as an indicator of profitability. Comparison of competitors and the enterprise's profitability indicators, and compared with the industry's average profitability, to determine the level of profitability of the enterprise in what position. At the same time, the composition of the profit margin should be analyzed. Mainly analyze the main business cost ratio, operating expense ratio, management expense ratio and financial expense ratio. See which index is better than the competitors, which index is higher than the competitors. Thus take appropriate measures to improve the profitability of the enterprise.
For example, the enterprise's operating expense ratio is much higher than the competitors' operating expense ratio. Here we need to make a detailed analysis of the specific reasons for the high operating expense ratio. Operating expenses include: sales staff salaries, logistics costs, advertising costs, promotional costs, and others (travel, office expenses, etc.). Through the analysis of these specific items to identify gaps. And take appropriate measures to reduce operating expenses.
Competitor growth analysis. The main indicators analyzed are the growth rate of production and sales, profit growth rate. At the same time on the sales growth rate and profit growth rate to make a comparative analysis to see the relationship between the two growth. Is the growth rate of profits faster than the growth rate of production and sales, or the growth rate of production and sales faster than the growth rate of profits. Generally speaking, the growth rate of profit is faster than the growth rate of production and sales, indicating that the enterprise has better growth. However, in the current market conditions, the enterprise's production and sales growth, most of which does not come from natural growth, but mainly through mergers and acquisitions to realize the way. Therefore, the growth rate of production and sales is often much larger than the growth rate of profits. Therefore, when analyzing the growth of a company, it is necessary to conduct a specific analysis and exclude the influence of mergers and acquisitions.
Other financial analysis, such as gearing analysis, cost analysis, in many financial management books are mentioned, will not be discussed here.
3. Analysis of competitors' capacity utilization
Capacity utilization is a very important indicator, especially for manufacturing companies, it is directly related to the cost of production. Capacity utilization refers to the degree of production capacity of the enterprise to play, it is clear that the enterprise's capacity utilization rate is high, the fixed cost per unit of product is relatively low. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the capacity utilization of competitors.
The purpose of the analysis is to find out the gap with competitors in capacity utilization, and analyze the reasons for this gap, targeted to improve the enterprise's business processes, improve the enterprise's capacity utilization, and reduce the enterprise's production costs.
4.
Competitor's innovation ability analysis
The current market environment in which the enterprise is located is a hyper-competitive environment. The so-called hyper-competitive environment means that the survival environment of the enterprise is constantly changing. In such a market environment, it is hard to say what is the core competitiveness of an enterprise. Enterprises can only adapt to the changing market environment by continuous learning and innovation. Therefore, learning and innovation have become the main core competitiveness of enterprises.
The analysis of competitors' learning and innovation can be carried out from the following indicators:
1) the speed of launching new products, which is an important indicator to test the scientific research ability of enterprises.
2) The percentage of research expenditure to sales revenue, which reflects the importance the company attaches to technological innovation.
3) Innovation of sales channels. It mainly depends on the degree of integration of sales channels by competitors. Sales channel is the main channel of profitability, strengthen the management and innovation of sales channels, better control of sales channels, the enterprise may be in the whole value chain (including suppliers and distributors) to share more profits.
4) Management innovation. In China, the management level of enterprises has been at a lower level. With China's accession to the WTO, foreign capital is more involved in the domestic market competition. In such a fiercely competitive market environment, enterprises can only continue to improve their own management level, management innovation, in order not to be eliminated by the fierce market competition.
Through the analysis of competitors' learning and innovation ability, we can find out the gap of our enterprise in learning and innovation, and improve our enterprise's learning and innovation ability. Only through continuous learning and innovation can we create a differentiation strategy for our enterprise and improve our competitive level in order to obtain excess profits higher than the average profit of the industry.
5. Analyze the leaders of competitors
The style of a leader often determines the corporate culture and values of a company, and is one of the key factors for the success of a company. An adventurous and innovative leader will make drastic reforms to the enterprise and constantly seek new growth opportunities for the enterprise; a leader with a stable character will focus on the inner growth of the enterprise and tap the internal potential of the enterprise. So studying the leaders of your competitors is a great help in grasping the strategic trends and priorities of your organization.
The analysis of competitors' leaders includes: name, age, gender, educational background, major experience, training experience, past performance and so on. Through these aspects of the analysis, a comprehensive understanding of the personal qualities of the competitor's leader, as well as analyze what kind of changes and opportunities his such qualities will bring to his business. Of course, this also includes the change of the main leaders of competitors, and analyze the impact of the change of leaders for the development of the enterprise.
Third,
Enterprises should pay attention to competitor analysis
Enterprises should do a good job of competitor analysis, to provide a sufficient basis for the development of corporate strategy, in addition to mastering some commonly used analytical methods, we must also pay attention to the following aspects of the problem:
1.1. Establish a competitive intelligence system, do a good job of collecting basic data< /p>
To analyze competitors there must be a basis for protection, this foundation is the system of competitive intelligence and competitors' basic database.
Competitive intelligence system includes: the organization of competitive intelligence work, staffing, and the corresponding system software support, competitive intelligence aspects. Only the establishment of a competitive intelligence system, competitor monitoring and analysis, into a daily work, it is possible to grasp the dynamics of competitors in a timely manner, to provide timely information for business decision-making.
At the same time, the construction of competitors' basic database is very important. Modern enterprise decision-making, emphasizing scientific and accuracy, more emphasis on decision-making based on facts and data. Only with the establishment of a perfect competitor database, the analysis of competitors will not become a castle in the air, and can be put into practice.
2. Establish a competitor analysis model in line with industry characteristics
Different industries have different characteristics, for example, some industries are concerned about the return on investment, and some are more concerned about the market share. At the same time, the industry is at a different stage, the focus of attention will be different. So it is necessary for enterprises to establish a competitor analysis model in line with the characteristics of their own industry. Absolutely can not be copied.
3. Strengthen the competitor analysis of the target
The analysis of competitors, each should have its target. Some companies in the analysis of competitors, often the competitor's information can be grasped are listed, but then there is no further. So here it is important to clarify what the purpose of analyzing competitors is. According to the viewpoint of strategic management, the purpose of analyzing competitors is to find out the advantages and disadvantages of the enterprise compared with competitors, as well as the opportunities and threats brought by competitors to the enterprise, so as to provide a basis for the enterprise to formulate strategies. Therefore, there should be a selection process for competitors' information, and we should be good at eliminating useless information to avoid blindness and inefficiency.