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Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Core Competencies and Competitive Advantage


Our Core Competencies
            At R&R Sensors (this is the name I have given my Capsim Core company), the top three core competencies are: providing a high-end sensor that appeals directly to the high tech customers, exceptional teamwork, and outstanding ethical values. Our first competency is essentially product redesign as we are moving away from a sensor that appeals to both low tech and high tech customers and putting our focus into high tech customers. This will enable R&R Sensors to focus more on this one area, do thorough research on what makes a high tech customer happy and then deliver by giving them a product with the performance, size, and reliability they are after. By taking the time to understand our target market, we can deliver a product that will be stellar and unique, and one of the best ways to understand the core competencies we have is to know the value of uniqueness within our own products. By using the idea of core competencies to better understand the talents a company has, we can develop a unique approach to focusing on areas that matter the most to our customers, this is where the second and third competencies come in (Mind Tools, 2018). After making the tough decision to continue with the marketing campaign for creating a better production process that eliminates the use of wasteful materials, but in doing so changing the campaign so the public was aware the waste was not reduced as of yet, our team came together and worked hard to research this problem. R&R Sensors did not leave this solely up to Marketing, instead the company worked as one big team to start the process to make this change happen. When an organization comes together as a unified team, this becomes a core competency, not all businesses can pull this off, and when the team works well together, operations management, production, and the products have better results, which then are transferred to the customers in a positive way. Third, our company prides itself on our outstanding ethical values, our morals and values are the reason we chose to not cover up the lack of waste reduction, even if it led to slightly lower profits than we would have liked. Our customers, all of our stakeholders, deserve our very best and we believe in the day and age where ethics are so hard come by, we do this best! To determine whether or not the unique things a company thinks are core competencies truly are or not, three tests need to be passed with a “yes”:
1. Is our business giving the customers something they really want and going about it in a way that strongly influences them to purchase from us, something relevant?
2. Is the core competence hard to duplicate, hard for other companies to copy?
3. Does our product or service open up market opportunities or is it stuck with a very small market?
If the answer is yes to all the questions above, we can feel confident that we have developed true core competencies (Mind Tools, 2018). We are developing a redesigned sensor that the high tech customers want, teamwork that works in a way that benefits the customers, and ethics that attracts customers to us. We want our sensors to be made in such a way that, yes, they are hard to duplicate and we believe our teams and ethics are also the same way, we work together so well that it will be hard to find a team or company like the one we have created. Finally, our sensors are not limited to a few small market places, they are sensors that belong in many electronic devices from cell phones to cars to elevators and our high tech customers can come from any location. Our team members and ethical views will pave the way to get there.
Competitive Advantages
            Our core competencies give us part of our competitive advantage because they go hand-in-hand. In order for a strength to become an advantage, an opportunity has to be filled by the product or service Sometimes, advantages are more commanding than other ones (Page, 2014). Our first advantage comes from the sensors we are redesigning, these will be updated in a way to be more appealing to the performance, size, and reliability that the high tech customers are after and we want to do this better than the competition. Creating a sensor that stands out having better performance, smaller size, and is more reliable all within the price range will appeal to all our high tech customers and give us the advantage over competitors who are focusing more on low tech, both sets of customers, or are trying to focus on high tech, but fail to deliver at the right specifications.


Positioning Strategy
            A positioning strategy is developed as a way to put a company’s products or services ahead of the others in the industry, it’s the reason it is different, such as why the major fast food chains can all serve burgers, but those burgers are all different in their own way and marketed so. Once the strategy is created it needs to be tested, making sure it’s as good as the company thinks it is and the only ones who can accurately let us know are the targeted customers we are marketing the sensors to (Entrepreneur, 2018). As discussed previously, our goal is to create a sensor for the high tech market, in order to position ourselves in a way to be unique among our competitors, we will have to prove it is the best by showing the research our Research and Development Department has done and also include parts of the production process, not enough to give away our product secrets, but enough to show that this sensor really is the best in the industry. And because actions speak louder than words, also showing that we are a unified, ethical team here at R&R Sensors will be made part of the positioning strategy as well. It seems that many companies anymore “talk the talk”, but do not “walk the walk” when it comes to morals, values, and ethics in the workplace and so many have let their customers down by cutting corners or lying about the products they are selling (both Volkswagen and Blue Buffalo come to mind). We will be different, we will stand out from the crowd of competitors and be that ethical company that can be trusted and we will do this by being open, honest, and also owning up to our mistakes and finding ways to correct them. In our situation, a lot of what we are doing product-wise is coming from the Research and Development Department doing exactly what the name implies, researching the best ways to create and update the sensor we have by using the newest technology available; then, developing the sensor into the newly designed product we will sell. This is what the department is good at, these are the key qualities these employees have, which will contribute to R&R Sensor’s success, these qualities are that department’s core competencies. The teamwork attitude and promise to be ethical stems from the organization’s attitudes and behaviors that set us apart, but also position us in a way to be in an advantageous place among competitors. These competencies should always be built upon and revised when needed, they are not always going to be the same, as the business changes and grows, so will our core competencies (Krompf, 2007).
Creating Value
            When our positioning strategy is to create something better than what’s already on the market, this automatically creates value for all our stakeholders – which includes shareholders, communities, and society as stakeholders is described as those affected by the actions we do here as a company whether directly or indirectly (Huemann et all, 2016). The improved sensor will appeal to our customer, supplier, employee, and shareholder-based stakeholders. Our customers will be excited to try out the new high tech sensor with all the improvements that have been made, suppliers will benefit as we will have to order higher quality supplies for production, employees will have the opportunity to recreate something into a newer product and embrace their creativity, and shareholders will be excited that this improved sensor will deliver higher profits. Being an organizational team as well as ethical will benefit all those involved, especially the community surrounding the business. Having a trustworthy company means those purchasing from us will have a reliable product where their money will be well-spent instead of wasted and our internal stakeholders will know they can rely on those in charge to tell them the truth while allowing the freedom to work creatively as a team, their work will be valued and each worker respected. Starting with our employees and spreading to society as a whole means our core competencies, competitive advantage, and positioning strategy will all work together to come full circle to benefit everyone we possibly can.

References:
Entrepreneur. (2018). Positioning. Retrieved from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/positioning
Heumann, Martina; Eskerod, Pernille; and Ringhofer, Claudia. (2016). Rethink! Project Stakeholder Management. 
Krompf, Warren M. (2007). Identify Core Competencies for Job Success: Organization Development, Vol. 24. 
Mind Tools. (2018). Core Competencies Analysis. Retrieved from:https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_94.htm
Page, Kogan. (2014). Uncommon Leadership: How to Build Competitive Advantage by Thinking Differently. 

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