SA FIRMS MUST WAKE UP TO A NEW WAVE OF COMPETITION
There seems to be no end to the global financial crisis. The business environment is tougher than ever—and there are further challenges ahead. One thing you can bank on is a rapid escalation in competitiveness by world class competitors—and not only from emerging countries like China, India, and Brazil, but from developed nations too.
Companies have always faced challenges, always had to deal with change. But now the business game is in the throes of its biggest, fastest transformation ever.
The world’s population recently passed the 7 billion mark. In just the past five years, some 3 billion people—about half the world’s population—have joined the mainstream of global affairs. So with new customers for just about everything, new competitors have emerged everywhere. The economic downturn has made them more desperate for sales, and increasingly aggressive in their practices.
They’re offering customers radical new value propositions. They’re frantically cutting costs, and using new technology to streamline processes and raise service levels. They’re slashing prices to the bone and becoming smarter in their promotions. And there’s no way to stop them advancing.
Firms everywhere are at a strategic inflection point. Their old strategic simply aren’t working any more. But many South African managers haven’t grasped this reality. They’re in more trouble than they imagine.
Manufacturers will battle to compete not only at the low end of the market, but also at the high end: in the “value added” niches that many see as their salvation. For the bar of performance is being raised fast, and Asian factories are now racing up the quality and sophistication curve even as they race down the cost curve.
Nor will the services sector be immune to the new pressures. Here, too, India and China pose major threats.
The new players are taking everyone on. So firms in the US, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere are having to shape up, too. The hypercompetition we’ve been warned about for so long really is upon us. Complacency is the kiss of death.
The much vaunted resilience of South African executives is being tested as never before … and this is just warm-up time. So consider these questions:
- Is your strategy clear and understood by all your people?
- Does it really make sense, given the challenges you face today and that you will face tomorrow?
- Are you focusing on your real priorities?
- Do you have the team you need to fight tomorrow’s battles?
- Do you you spend enough time thinking about the future?
- Are you spending enough time rethinking your organizational arrangements—people, architecture, technologies, processes—and are you investing enough in them?
- Are you systematically building the capabilities and resources you’ll need in the future?
- Have you taken the hard action that’s necessary to get through this moment?
- Are you driving forward aggressively and with a clear purpose … or just dreaming of a better future?
- Are you tough enough on performance?