Case Study: Siemens Strategy To Increase Competitive Advantage

Edmundson (2013) explains that companies that consistently expand in a profitable manner have learned to take their strength and transform them into a competitive advantage. Edmundson (2013) list nine principals that will help companies turn their strengths into competitive advantages. The nine principals are to be quantifiable, stay objective and creditable, be true and accurate, not stated by you’re competition, contrast, use concrete facts and tangible data, emotional, focused and simple, and tell stories to make your audience relate. Edmundson (2013) continues that typically companies that have

•Profitable: one of the key criterions for selecting the above competitive advantages is that the company can introduce them profitably.

According to Rogers (2003), relative advantage helps to gain buy in from staff. In order to acquire knowledge

Porter states that there are 2 types of competitive advantage a firm can possess as mentioned above however , there are 3 generic strategies for achieving competitive advantage in an industry; cost advantage/leadership, differentiation and focus. The first type of competitive advantage is cost advantage /leadership, it is when a firm becomes low cost producer in its industry. It minimizes the cost to the organization of delivering products and services. According to Porter (1985) , there are two ways of achieving cost leadership either by increasing profit by reducing costs while charging the average price. Or by increasing market share through charging lower prices while still achieving a reasonable profit on each sale because your cost has been reduced. Furthermore, companies that are successful in achieving cost leadership usually have an access to the capital needed to invest in technology which helps reduce the cost.

Distribution network is the operational hinge we should build around. Distribution affects everything from delivery tracking to sales strategy. The main goal is to improve the

1. What is competitive advantage, and how does it relate to a company’s business model?

What were the major causes of the problems with the NetManager project? (I’m not looking for a list of points made in the case; I’m looking for you to step back to a higher level and analyze why these problems occurred.)

To attain competitive gain, organisations can differentiate their merchandise and services from their competitors they can also choose to lower their costs in order to compete with other contenders. By aiming their produces to a wide-ranging target, they are essentially covering most of the marketplace or if they choose, they can decide to concentrate on a narrower target within the market (Lynch 2003). While doing so may reduce their market range it essentially reduces their other competitors. Porter stated that there are three generic strategies that an organisation can follow to achieve competitive gain over other organisations. These are:

According to Michael Porter competitive advantage can be gained by the use of three major strategies. The first is the cost leadership, second the differentiation of the product and the third is choosing the small segment for competing and concentrating. Narrowing the segments causes a better scope for the competitive strategy. Thus a leader with low cost, provided that the quality is delivered has a market advantage. The product must be standard, but may of the no-frills kind. With this cost factor the company will try and seek to become special in the market using a strategy of product differentiation. Thus the insistence would be on uniqueness of the product, something that differentiates or creates a separate entity in the minds of the customer. Thus the firm generally must also choose the identity and the attributes 'in which to differentiate it that are different from its rivals.' (Johnson; Scholes, 1997, p. 47)

Maintaining competitive advantage in today 's ever-changing business environment is not a simple task. For any company to maintain a competitive advantage, the company must develop the advantage such that it is "rare, costly to imitate, no substitutable, and nontransferable" (Snyman, J.H., 2006). Along these lines, Michael Porter has provided five competitive forces that can assist any company in maintaining the advantage. These forces are "the entry of new competitors, the threat of substitutes, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers, and the rivalry among existing competitors ' " (Pfeffer, J., 2005). Three methods for maintaining competitive advantage that will

For using differentiation competitive strategy, this organization has been cherishing exceptional advantages and some of them are as followed:

All of these 5 competitive strategies are used to get ahead and create an advantage over all a company 's rivals

Competitive Advantage may be defined as the benefit to company or organisation due to its products, good quality or low prices which distinguishes the company or organisation in Market and results in Increase sale and Good reputation. In Today’s time, to do a business in Market is not a piece of cake. The businessman needs to face a lot number of challenges to stay in market and do well in business. They need to complete their Goals and Objectives on Time and make a right decision at right time and at right palace. To struggle the challenges that comes on their way they need to execute certain strategies like-:

Developing competitive advantage has three key core components (Winer, 2004). According to Winer (2004), the first component is that “competitive advantage must be able to produce customer value, which is defined by the consumer as lower prices, convenience, or quick delivery time”. The second core component is the enhanced value of the product or service provided as perceived by a consumer. Whether or not your product is superior, it must be seen as such by the consumer. Finally, the third component to competitive advantage requires that the business approach an entrepreneur uses should be difficult for competitors to duplicate.

For transforming a short-run competitive advantage into a sustained competitive advantage we require resources that are heterogeneous in nature and not perfectly mobile. This translates into valuable resources that are neither perfectly imitable nor substitutable without great effort. If these conditions are fulfilled then the bundle of resources can sustain the firm's above average returns.