Positioning Strategy And Dominate The Australian General Insurance Market

In order for a firm to create competitive advantage, it needs to create a set of activites that can deliver value to the specific product and services it offers to its customers. To start talking about my life as a “value chain”, I may need to compare it to a specific product”. This is going to take precedence both in my personal life and professional life.

The value chain, made by Michael Porter, is really important to see how a company structure is created. The value chain is constituted by two parts: support activities (firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, procurement) and primary activities (inbound logistic, operations, outbound logistic, marketing and sales, service). (Johnson et al. 2011, p.97-99)

For instance, within the customer service center there is a separation from billing, to customer service. In addition, engineering and other behind the scenes departments like human resources function separately as well. The organization is seen as divisional based on the separation from geographic areas. One other important aspect is the Kansas Gas services is a part of the Union, and the other divisions do not have union represented employees. In order to make the organization a more cohesive unit it set out a strategic plan to Become One. Becoming One for the organization was to find a way for the divisions to share their best practices and become a solid unit, to Become One.

Mintzberg (1981) discussed that divisional structured organisations ' top management often uses performance control systems over each divisions but leave the details to the division 's management. This system adds extra paper work and slows communications. Tasks are duplicated across divisions, increasing costs and efficiency. These problems also lead to increasing the span of control of the managers. Problems associated with a divisional organisation structure are typically:

Each division is operating independently with its own division manager. Also, each division’s performance had been judged on its profit and return on investment (ROI). The company policy of decentralizing responsibility and authority for all

1. Better resource allocation to reduce variable costs. The company operates in more efficient resources.

More fundamentally giving each division manager the responsibility of its divisions operations and not allowing it to interfere with other divisions.

positioning concepts has been used by the company to obtain such a market mix that Smith’s

* Lack of Information and communication across divisions Each division maintains its own marketing, manufacturing, logistics and administrative departments (Silos)

The first step in writing your Positioning Strategy is to select the six general components by checking

The most important question you need to address in your business is "What position do you want to hold - in the market and in the minds of your clients?"

The company should adopt a matrix structure by incorporating both the functional and organizational structure. The company can

The value chain analysis (shown in appendix) was also generated by Michael Porter. This model is referred to “identifying ways to increase the efficiency of the chain” (Investopedia, n.d.). Furthermore, the overall objective is to produce maximum value with minimum total cost and establish a competitive advantage.

WCC should also look to remove organizational barriers associated with the divisions of the company. They should investigate having either centralized or a hybrid administrative, marketing, and manufacturing to better align logistics. It appears too that communication and managerial alignment need to be evaluated to reduce the layers of management.

Empower your current position, and make the image that you are the right choice brand because you are the best or have a competitive advantage.