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Know how to doubt
Self-satisfaction is the biggest danger to Enterprises and particularly to Large Enterprises.
Large groups can disappear quickly today: the Image may be excellent, the finances flourishing, the staff proud of their Enterprise, and then all these assets can crumble in several years: we all remember the examples of Kodak, Nokia, Peugeot, Surcouf,... -
Carry out business monitoring
One way of remaining vigilant is to carry out business monitoring.
Start from the Value to enlarge the number of competitors: we need to do more than watch what the traditional competitors are doing, we need to also understand what the newcomers offer, who seek to bring the same Value with different Products. The competitors of a TV channel are not only the other TV channels, but especially the usage of Internet which is leading young people to gradually turn away from classic television. -
But do not hesitate to stand out from the crowd
That said, the quicker the products evolve, the more difficult it is to rely on competitive analysis to understand the Market evolution.
In markets where Product renewal is quick, we have to focus more on the Customer than on the competitors to imagine new products:- the rhythm of change is too great for us to wait for the competitors to have developed new Offers to make decisions
- the big success stories (Google, Amazon, Apple...) were
guided, first and foremost, by observing what the customer
expected
One of the difficulties is to remain objective in this analysis.
To give an example, online banking has met with considerable success in England but not in France: is it due to a cultural difference between consumer behavior or to differences in the Offer? As the cultures are similar, we should be wary of those who blame customer behavior while their Offer is perhaps inadequate.
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