Business Competitiveness: Is It Possible To Have A Business Without Any Weaknesses?

Is it possible to have such business? Is it feasible?

I have been thinking about this lately and here is my take on it.

  

Everything In Business (Resources)!

Everything (all resources) has its own use, place, specific purpose and when used properly, smartly according to its specific purpose, it delivers.

But when used otherwise, it results in certain weaknesses, for instance improper or ineffective use of R&D resources can result in poor product quality, poor design consequently product failure, customer dissatisfaction, shrinking profits, market share etc.

Now considering the above point, if you want to have a business without any or minimum weaknesses you need to cover all such weaknesses and for that you need to know the right, proper utilization of all your business resources. 

So the question now is..

How To Ensure Proper Utilization Or Right Utilization Of Available Resources

There had been, there are and there will be businesses similar to yours, with somewhat similar resources, having similar situation yet attaining desired results by proper or effective utilization of the given resource (where your business fails).

Fact: Each year around one million businesses starts in the USA alone that excludes online start-ups ^{(1) (2)} and majority of these businesses are basically me-too’s due to the fact that, Nearly 50 percent of new products introduced in the market are complete failures and more than 70 percent do not reach their sales goals ⁽³⁾.

Identify Such Businesses

Identify and research such businesses (identify just the best five or as much your business can afford), research and analyze them then by using qualitative & quantitative research techniques like questionnaires, surveys, focus groups, friendship pairs, interviews etc.

According to a study published in well reputed journal, both of these research methods (qualitative & quantitative) provides essential data, insight on markets, their structure, key competitors, trends and consumer behavior and attitudes ⁽⁴⁾.

Remember that every research method has its own strengths and limitations, therefore combination of different methods should be used so that weaknesses of one are helped by strengths of other and vice versa ⁽⁵⁾.

Fact: Each year companies across the globe invest about $33.5 billion in market research ⁽⁶⁾.

Plan & Implement

After gaining a rich insight, next step is to plan and implement to attain proper utilization of the given resource.

Evaluate & Research

Assess the whole situation, see if new approach (proper utilization) is working out as expected, resulting in proper utilization, if not, see if tweaking or re-planning the given approach, method would deliver if not then you need to research (again) that given situation further to gain much better insight and so to achieve the desired outcomes (proper utilization of a given resource).

Related Article: Real Time SWOT: Learn how to take smart decisions

Related Article: How to identify opportunities & threats
 

That's it over to you guys! 

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References:

1.      Global Entreprenurship Monitor: National Entrepreneurship Assessment-United States of America, 2002 Executive Report.

2.      Small Business by the Numbers (Washington DC: Small Business Administration, 2004)

3.      Delre, S.A., Jager, W., Bijmolt, T.H.A. and Janssen, M.A. (2007), “Targeting and timing promotional activities: an agent-based model for the takeoff of new products”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 60 No. 8, pp. 826-835.

4.      Proctor, T. (2000), Essentials of Marketing Research, Pearson Education Limited, Essex.

5.      Deshpande, R. (1983) ‘Paradigms lost’: on theory and method in research in marketing. Journal of Marketing, 47, 101–110.

6.      http://www.marketingpower.com/ResourceLibrary/MarketingResearch/Pages/Mkt%20Insights%202013/Winter/curation-consumer-insight-market-research-roi.aspx