Bulletproof Strategy..!!

“Strategic management” is formed by the combination of two words, ‘strategy’ and ‘management’. These two words holds relevant importance in today’s competitive world, where every other company is trying to acquire maximum market share in the respective industry.

These two words enables the company to take competitive advantage by formulating unique strategy and having proper management to execute that strategy.

These two words are not of recent origin and their use is not only limited to the corporate world, but the origin of these words dates back to ancient times of fighters like Hercules, Alexander and Sun Tzu. Strategy has been used in each and every battle and war fought in ancient, medieval and modern history of the world and will be continued to be used in future wars also. Strategy is the set of steps adopted by one party to gain advantage over other party in a war. The strategy was formulated with the help of tactics which were adopted for battles.

The guidelines for formulating unique and positive result oriented strategy were laid down by the outcomes of the famous battles and wars and through the works done by kings and war leaders of various wars in the course of world history.

Such one example is of the work done by Chinese war general Sun-Tzu in his book named as “The Art of War”. This book contains the strategies which were adopted by him in every war he fought, which gave him success throughout his life.

Unlike history, the strategy has found its importance in corporate world more than in any other field, where today’s competitive world is considered as a continuous battle and war state between the companies, where company having best strategic management survives.

But how to say that which strategy will work in which circumstance and for what time period and whether the formulated strategy will work in all situations or not. Before finding answers to these questions, we should understand how strategy or competitive advantage can be developed.

There are many areas where a company can develop competitive advantage, but the most important and reliable area is of technology.

“Technology is defined as the set of process which results in adding value in consistency”. Technology is considered to be the backbone of most of the industries, which is continuously evolving and developing.

With such a rapid change in technology, companies which are able to move with the change are able survive, others just fade away with the time.

The greatest example of this is the case of Kodak, which was leader in the technology of traditional film photography, but after the entry of digital photography by Sony, they could not catch up the changed technology and soon wiped away from the market.

On the other hand, taking example of Samsung, which moved the world by going with the new android technology in mobile phones. It became the leader in the mobile phone industry out of no-where, forcing market leaders like Nokia to innovate and change their technology.

The technology can be broadly classified as the hard technology and the soft technology, where both the streams of technology leads to complete technology up gradation in any industry. On one hand, hard technology deals with the sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, electronics and others, the soft technology deals with the basic areas of management and functional areas of a company. Dividing functional areas of a company in smaller areas of marketing, finance, human resource and operations can be helpful initially for a company, but on a long run, will lead to problems in coordination and conflicts of interest.

For a company which is trying to bring out technological changes in the system, only working on hard technology which not suffice as soft technology is equally important for the successful implementation.

Again taking the example of Kodak, after entry of Sony in the area of digital photography, company invested heavily on research and development of the digital technology and came up with a good technology which had the potential to help company retail its market position. But the problem was with the middle level management, which was change resistant and as result, company did not launched the technology and lost all it had. Thus the soft technology also plays a very important role in designing the strategy for a company.

Digging further into technology, every technology adoption has some stages, which determines the level of competitive advantage a company has. The first stage or the beginning stage is of familiarity, where the company just adopted the technology and is getting familiar with it. The next stage is of competence where company achieves competence in the technology and can utilize the technology efficiently. The third and the last stage is of competitiveness, which enables a company to compete with the other companies on the bases of strong hold of technology.

Taking the example of Toyota, which is famous worldwide for its lean production technology, evolved the technology and once was beginner in that technology. As time elapsed, it acquired competence in that technology and by this time other companies also realized the importance of this technology and they started adopting it. Today Toyota is the master in this technology and it has achieved competitiveness in it which has helped it to become the largest automobile manufacturer in the world.

But is simply changing to new technology enough for the success? The answer is no. The technology is the driving force for the industry and the companies, and simply changing technology cannot guarantee the competitive advantage.

The competitive advantage is achieved by efficient utilization of available resources with the help of smart management. Thus the combination of the three factors of resources, utilization and management creates the bulletproof strategy for a company.

But can we formulate the general guidelines for the companies to follow in order to achieve everlasting competitive advantage? Again the answer is no. The strategy is dynamic and customized. Neither it can be generalized nor timed. No one know the time duration a particular strategy will work for and also the situations it will work in.

The need of the hour is maximizing convenience, maximizing choice with a lesser price and to achieve this, prudent decisions have to be made at each and every step and level in a company.

How to formulate an everlasting bulletproof strategy is yet to be discovered.

Are we selling products & services!! Really!!??

I have been thinking about this one thing for about last 15 months, which is considered as one of the most difficult things yet essential things for a person. One question which comes to my mind about this very thing is what it really is and what is the most essential thing to understand to do it effectively. This essential thing is none other than a skill known as "SELLING".

I have tried to analyze it from every possible angle, listened to many opinions and came across numerous thoughts, and after mixing all those with my own belief and understanding, found one good way of selling.

Selling is not selling simply goods or services of a company you are working for, it is much simpler than that. The main thing is understanding what do we sell, which customer will happily buy and the answer is "HOPE"

We sell hope to people, the hope of changing their life. Every person has something in his life  which he wants to change and we sell him the hope of changing that thing. The hope of making him achieve the condition he wants have in his life. The condition which is better than present condition. In a way we sell hope of making his life better than past and present.

To do that, we just need to identify that change which he wants to bring in his life and offer him that change, through the product or service we are selling. For understanding the change he wants, put yourself in his shoes.

“Marketing the Unknown India”

India is one of the fastest growing economies in world, world’s third biggest economy (PPP) and the land of second highest population in the world. All these jewels makes ‘Indian crown’ a desire for every multinational company. According to a study by the Indian government, there were 3245 foreign companies operating in the country by June, 2014.

Every year, many new foreign companies enter the country and raise a war against pre-established multinational and national companies. As a result, Indian companies are losing their grounds, despite having the capability and potential products & services, they are unable to compete with worldwide famous brands & mammoth sized companies, and are nowhere to be seen on international grounds.

Recent list of Fortune 500 companies showed that only eight Indian companies were able to make their mark on the list and only 54 Indian companies were able to make up to the list of ‘The world’s biggest public companies’, by Forbes 'Global 2000'.

The question which now arise is “what is the reason for this adverse situation of Indian brands and companies” and the answer is hidden in only one word, “Marketing”.

Indian brands and companies are unknown to people in other countries and also in India and therefore people prefer to spend their valuable money on ‘global brands’ from the houses of multinational companies and not on ‘national brands’ from Indian companies. According to ‘The world’s most valued brands’,study by Forbes, and ‘Best Global brands’, study by Interbrand, not a single Indian brand was able to make to both lists ever in history of these studies.

In today’s ‘brand fanatic’ world, companies cannot survive the competition without placing their brands higher in minds of both customer & consumer, than their competing brands. ‘Top of the memory’ recall for a brand should be highest, then only people will consider a brand an option for purchase. But very few Indian companies have been able to create this successfully, among which ‘Madura Fashion and lifestyle’ is the best example.

Brands not only help companies to grow, but known brands create a brand image of the country they belong to and in turn they & new brands take leverage of the established brand image of their origin country. This is a continuous cycle of Brands and their country of origin.

If we take name of America, a flood of brands comes into our mind, and names of Apple, Google, Facebook, Walmart, Amazon leads to name of America. Indian brands are unknown to world and as a result India as a brand is not established in minds of people across globe, which again leads to a pull down effect on Indian brands and products and services offered by them. This chain has to be broken by ‘Marketing’.

Indian companies need to change their marketing strategies to achieve a high position in their target customer’s mind, which can allow them compete with global brands, then only it is possible to transform country from ‘unknown India’ to ‘known India’ and finally to ‘famous India’.