The Dao of Strategic Assessment (6): After the Assessment

Most larger opposition usually have bigger budgets and a large strategic network. No matter how large the opposition is, they can be beaten. The question is do you have the time, the resources and the patience to compete against them?

Once the assessment of each competitor is completed (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, etc. ) what is your next step?

We recommend the building of a strategic overview that defines your priorities, your approaches and the "possible" circumstances. It helps to know your tangible timeline, the amount of available resources, your strengths, your weaknesses, the opportunities and the threats of your opposition, etc.

With the right process and plan, the priority objective of the consummate strategist is to find the gaps inside the competition's strategy and the grand settings while completing the target.

The "idea" approach is to focus on indirect confrontation. It does take some time of planning and preparation. From our experience, the benefits are fantastic.

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The following material on the various strategic approaches is from http://marketingplaybook.com

1: Drag Race Play: Pick a competitor and try to beat it in head-on competition.

With the Drag Race Play approach, one picks one competitor to compare himself to and then you put all you have into beating them across the finish line.

2: Stealth Play: Stay under the radar.
Sneak behind the competition's back and then focus on gaining on the competition incrementally. 90 percent of startups begin in this stealth mode.

This play is almost the opposite of the Drag Race. When you are running the stealth mode, you are trying to avoid getting squashed by the competition. Generally you focus on a specific niche where you can build your strength unnoticed. You often add-on, peacefully coexist and even draft behind the would-be biggest competitor(s), avoiding drag races completely. Until you have what it takes to move onto another more open and larger play.


3: Platform Play: Develop an alliance with people who you trust. Allow them to succeed w/ you.

The Platform Play enables you to rise above the competition, or even co-opt them. You win by becoming a Platform from which everyone can win too. By making it easy and profitable for others to ally with you and painful for them to let you loose, you will win.

4. The Best of Both Play

You offer the other party a choice of "near the best" to the low end.

5. The High-Low Play

This play is basically the opposite of the Best of Both Play. Here, instead of offering a combination that collapses the extremes of a category, you emphasize the importance of choice. You offer both extremes, no compromises and a migration path between them. A composite macro choice that can be both a large-margin choice for those who can afford it and a low-end object that does a lot for most people.

In this situation, you present the other party a choice of two (to three) options and they have to make a choice.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002000080_btinterface09.html

Assessing The Grand Picture of Information

Does your flow of information currently help you?
Does it add you any value to your life?

We are living in a global society where our speed of our lives is driven by microprocessors. While our minds are overwhelmed by more noisy information than "high signal" intelligence, our actions are influenced by massive kludges of information.

The following set of questions is one of the many tools that we use to assess the general picture of information

1. Is the information a "hype"?
If it is too good to be true, it is not good. Simple messages are used to gain your time and attention. ... Just remember, all that glitters is not gold.

2. Would I use the information?
Determining whether the information fits your needs and wants is the next step to filter the signal from the noise.

3. If I do not see the immediate answer, what should I do with it?
Determine if you can use it within the next 90 to180 days. If not, delete it. There is a good chance that the specific information will be repeatedly broadcast.

4. Does the information have any value?
Most information are republished in different forms. In most cases it usually possess minimum value to most people.

5. Why does most information possess such minimum value?
The global informational economy has made general information free of any tangible cost. Expert view and timely information does cost. ... Your time is your money. If the information does not help you to conserve or enhance your cash base, then delete it immediately.

With our Compass AE process, .you will know whether the information enables you to do the following:

• Determine the critical path;
• Avoid obstacles;
• Focus on positive circumstances; and
  
• Anticipate opportunities.

Finding tangible information is the challenge. Having the right strategic process to filter the wheat from the chaff is key. Does any of your strategic processes or technology perform that well?

Our Compass AE process has the features that enables you to gain a strategic overview of your information. If you are interested in knowing more about Compass AE, contact us at Service [aatt] collaboration360 [dottt] com

Competing with Strategy

One cannot change the ground rules of a marketing arena if he or she does not know the rules of the game. One can fight on their own terms if he or she does know the limitations of each competitor.

With our Compass AE process, you will assess your grand settings. You will know more than the basics of yourself, your competition, your strengths, your weaknesses, the opportunities and the threats. You will also understand how each competitor operates in terms of the competitive terrains, the campaign logistics, and their true intent.

If you want to know more about our Compass AE process, please contact us at service@collaboration360.com


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Change the ground rules

Fight competitive sales on your terms

By Jerry Stapleton

Published January 23, 2009

How often do you have sheer dominance over your competition? Unless your solution is three times as compelling as the competitor’s, the answer is just about never!

Let’s face it: few companies are lucky enough to command such superiority. That’s why most sales campaigns end up as price battles.

If we don’t dominate the competition, then we have to change the ground rules of the sale to work in our favor.

You say you want a revolution

The soldiers who fought in the American Revolution did just that. Rather than march down the middle of the street wearing their uniforms, the revolutionaries dressed in their everyday clothes and hid behind rocks, trees and piles of hay to fight the British troops. They didn’t fight the way the British wanted them to fight.

Or recall a famous scene from the film “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Indiana Jones has just used a whip with considerable skill to fend off a few villains when he comes face to face with a man equally skilled but with a three-foot sword, which he twirls in front of Jones.

The audience watches in eager anticipation of an interesting but apparently fair battle: sword against whip. Instead, Jones suddenly pulls out his revolver and shoots his opponent. Jones changed the ground rules.

Avoid the feature trap

Mel, a salesperson for a client of mine, was selling inventory control software to a large feed mill company. Mel’s competitor’s product was clearly superior to his on a feature-by-feature comparison. They – not Mel – had sheer dominance.

But Mel’s company had one feed mill installation already under its belt; his competitor had none. So Mel changed the ground rules of the sale from technical features to feed mill expertise.

Mel never let his competitor suck him into a feature battle – which would have killed his chances. By staying “on message,” Mel won the deal.

Fight the battle on your terms

Here’s a superb illustration of a change-the-ground-rules strategy from the world of management consulting. Several years ago, the then consulting firm Coopers & Lybrand placed a series of print ads that showed a large picture of an ancient Chinese sword.

The ad’s caption read, “Does your consultant quote ‘The Art of War’ but shy away from battle?” (“The Art of War” is a popular ancient book about warfare that is commonly referenced, even today, in business settings).

Coopers & Lybrand was attempting to change the ground rules for the purchase of management consulting services from “providing theoretical strategic advice” (this is the quote “The Art of War” reference) to “facilitating the implementation of strategy” (the “shy away from battle” reference), something its competitors are not particularly strong at doing.

Take the RFP...please!

One can even change the ground rules when responding to a request for proposal (RFP). Another client salesperson did just that.

Julie had received a highly structured “sealed bid” RFP from a very large industrial company soliciting proposals for its natural gas supply. As is true with most such RFPs, the requesting company in this case planned to compare proposals from multiple gas suppliers and select the lowest price offering.

But Julie had different plans for her response to the RFP. She changed the ground rules from quoting the “lowest wellhead price” – the commodity measure typically used to compare natural gas prices that the request for proposal contained – to quoting “total energy cost,” more of a total cost of ownership kind of approach, and she won the deal. Julie’s last-minute timing was essential to prevent her competitors from attempting the same approach.

[ "If you're last, then use yin (soft) tactics, if you are first, then use yang (hard) tactics. When you have exhausted the enemy's yang measures, then expand yin to the full and seize them. ... This is then the subtle mysterious of yin and yang according to the strategists.
- Questions and Replies, 2 (from Seven Military Classics of Ancient China) ]

"Changing the ground rules that favors you" is a yin approach to playing any game,

Don’t let yourself get sucked into head-to-head engagements unless you have that elusive dominance. As you size up your own selling situation, ask yourself how you can lead with a perceived strength of your own against a perceived weakness of your competition.

Occasionally, that difference will be obvious, as in the examples above. Most other times, it’ll take some work, but it is well worth the effort.

http://www.biztimes.com/news/2009/1/23/change-the-ground-rules

The Dao of Strategic Assessment (5): Same Information, Different Assessment, Different Outcome

PepsiCo Americas Beverages division failed to assessed their competitive positioning before releasing their new packaging. Think of the time and money wasted in the planning and preparation.

During the assessment, their marketing ppl compared and contrast the data but failed to ask the right questions. They became too focused on the positives and not on the negatives.

This limited way of assessing happens all the time. It helps to have the right strategic assessment process.

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February 23, 2009 Advertising
Tropicana Discovers Some Buyers Are Passionate About Packaging
By STUART ELLIOTT
IT took 24 years, but PepsiCo now has its own version of New Coke. The PepsiCo Americas Beverages division of PepsiCo is bowing to public demand and scrapping the changes made to a flagship product, Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice.

Redesigned packaging that was introduced in early January is being discontinued, executives plan to announce on Monday, and the previous version will be brought back in the next month.

Also returning will be the longtime Tropicana brand symbol, an orange from which a straw protrudes. The symbol, meant to evoke fresh taste, had been supplanted on the new packages by a glass of orange juice. The about-face comes after consumers complained about the makeover in letters, e-mail messages and telephone calls and clamored for a return of the original look.


Some of those commenting described the new packaging as ugly or stupid, and resembling a generic bargain brand or a store brand. Do any of these package-design people actually shop for orange juice? the writer of one e-mail message asked rhetorically. Because I do, and the new cartons stink. Others described the redesign as making it more difficult to distinguish among the varieties of Tropicana or differentiate Tropicana from other orange juices. Such attention is becoming increasingly common as interactive technologies enable consumers to rapidly convey opinions to marketers.

You used to wait to go to the water cooler or a cocktail party to talk over something, said Richard Laermer, chief executive at RLM Public Relations in New York. Now, every minute is a cocktail party, he added. You write an e-mail and in an hour, you’ve got a fan base agreeing with you.

That ability to share brickbats or bouquets with other consumers is important because it facilitates the formation of ad hoc groups, more likely to be listened to than individuals.

There will always be people complaining, and always be people complaining about the complainers, said Peter Shankman, a public relations executive who specializes in social media. But this makes it easier to put us together.

The phenomenon was on display last week when users of Facebook complained about changes to the Web site’s terms of service using methods that included, yes, groups on facebook.com. Facebook yielded to the protests and reverted to its original contract with users. And in November, many consumers who used Twitter to criticize an ad for Motrin pain reliever received responses within 48 hours from the brand’s maker, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, which apologized for the ad and told them it had been withdrawn.

Twitter is the ultimate focus group, Mr. Shankman said. I can post something and in a minute get feedback from 700 people around the world, giving me their real opinions. Neil Campbell, president at Tropicana North America in Chicago, part of PepsiCo Americas Beverages, acknowledged that consumers can communicate with marketers more readily and more quickly than ever.

For companies that put consumers at the center of what they do, he said, it’s a good thing. It was not the volume of the outcries that led to the corporate change of heart, Mr. Campbell said, because it was a fraction of a percent of the people who buy the product. Rather, the criticism is being heeded because it came, Mr. Campbell said in a telephone interview on Friday, from some of our most loyal consumers.

We underestimated the deep emotional bond they had with the original packaging, he added. Those consumers are very important to us, so we responded. Among those who underestimated that bond was Mr. Campbell himself. In an interview last month to discuss the new packaging, he said, The straw and orange have been there for a long time, but people have not necessarily had a huge connection to them.

Reminded of that on Friday, Mr. Campbell said: What we didn’t get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn’t something that came out in the research. That echoed an explanation offered in 1985 by executives of the Coca-Cola Company in response to the avalanche of complaints when they replaced the original version of Coca-Cola with New Coke: Consumers in focus groups liked the taste of New Coke, but were not told old Coke would disappear. The original version was hastily brought back as Coca-Cola Classic and New Coke eventually fizzed out. (There are, it should be noted, significant differences between the two corporate flip-flops.

For instance, the Tropicana changes involved only packaging, not the formula for or taste of the beverage.) An ad campaign for Tropicana that helped herald the redesigned cartons, also introduced last month, will continue to run, Mr. Campbell said. Print and outdoor ads that have already appeared will not be changed, he added, but future elements of the campaign — like commercials, due in March — would be updated. Unlike the packaging, the campaign has drawn praise, particularly for including in its family imagery several photographs of fathers and children hugging. Such dad-centric images are rare in food ads.

The campaign, which carries the theme Squeeze it’s a natural, was created by Arnell in New York, part of the Omnicom Group. Arnell also created the new version of the Tropicana packaging.

Tropicana is doing exactly what they should be doing, Peter Arnell, chairman and chief creative officer at Arnell, said in a separate telephone interview on Friday. I’m incredibly surprised by the reaction, he added, referring to the complaints about his agency’s design work, but I’m glad Tropicana is getting this kind of attention. In fact, Tropicana plans to contact everyone who called or wrote us to express opinions, Mr. Campbell said, and explain to them we’re making the change.

Tropicana is among several PepsiCo brands whose packaging and logos have been recently redesigned by Arnell. The new logo the agency produced for Pepsi-Cola has been the subject of comments by ad bloggers who perceive a resemblance to the logo for the Barack Obama presidential campaign. The bloggers have also buzzed about a document outlining the creation of the Pepsi-Cola logo, which appears to have been written by Arnell for PepsiCo executives; Mr. Arnell has declined to comment on the authenticity of the document, which is titled Breathtaking Design Strategy and is written in grandiose language.

One aspect of the new Tropicana packaging is being salvaged: plastic caps for the cartons, also designed by Arnell, that are shaped and colored like oranges. Those caps will be used, Mr. Campbell said, for cartons of Trop 50, a variety of Tropicana with less sugar and calories that is to be introduced soon. During the interview last month, Mr. Campbell said that Tropicana would spend more than $35 million on the Squeeze campaign. Although he declined on Friday to discuss how much it would cost to scrap the new packaging and bring back the previous design, he said the amount isn’t significant.

Asked if he was chagrined that consumers rejected the changes he believed they wanted, Mr. Campbell replied: I feel it’s the right thing to do, to innovate as a company. I wouldn’t want to stop innovating as a result of this. At the same time, if consumers are speaking, you have to listen.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/media/23adcol.html

Protect Your Competitive Advantage!

To thrive in this global economy, one focuses on maintaining and enhancing their "competitive advantage incrementally."

Following are the two questions that you should ask yourself:

• "What is your competitive advantage!?"

• "How are you protecting it?"

Jiang Tai Gong book "Six Secret Teachings" emphasizes "the importance of protecting one's advantage."

King Wen asked Tai Gong:"How does one preserve the state's territory?"

Tai Gong said: "Do not estrange your relatives. Do not neglect the masses. Be concillatory and solicitous towards nearby states and control all that is under you. Do not loan the authority of state to other men. If you loan the authority of state to other men, then you will lose your authority. Do not hurt those of lower position to benefit those of higher position. Do not abandon the fundamental to save those that are inconsequential.

When the sun is at midday, you should dry things. If you grasp a knife, you must cut. If you hold an axe, you must attack."

"If at the height of the day, you do not dry things in the sun, this is termed losing the opportunity.

If you grasp a knife but do not cut anything, you will lose the moment for profits. If you hold an axe and do not attack, enemies will attack instead."

"If trickling streams are not blocked, they will become great rivers. If you do not extinguish the smallest flames, there is nothing much you can do when it turns into great flames.

If you do not eliminate the two-leaf sapling, you might have to use the axe to remove it in future." "For this reason, the ruler must focus on developing wealth within his state. Without material wealth, he has nothing with which to spread beneficence or to bring his relatives together.

If he estranges his relatives it will be harmful. If he loses the common people, he will be defeated. "

"Do not loan sharp weapons to other men. If you loan sharp weapons to other men, you will be hurt by them and will not live out your allotted span of years."

King Wen said:"What do you mean by benevolence and righteousness?"

Tai Gong replied: "Respect the common people, unite your relatives. If you respect the common people, they will be in harmony. And if you unite your relatives, they will be happy.

This is the way to implement the essential cords of benevolence and righteousness." "Do not allow other men to snatch away your awesomeness.

Rely on your wisdom, follow the norm. Those that submit and accord with you, treat them generously and virtuously. Those that oppose you, break with force. If you respect the people and trust, the state will be peaceful and populace submissive."
- T’ai Kung Liu-t’ao (Six Secret Teachings)

More on this topic can be found in Dr. Ralph Sawyer's Seven Military Classics of Ancient China.

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When a business component is no longer cost effective and significant to the greater part of the system, there is a strong possibility that it will be outsourced.



August 12, 2008
Cost-Cutting in New York and London, a Boom in India
By HEATHER TIMMONS

GURGAON, India On the top floor of a seven-story building in this dusty aspiring metropolis, Copal Partners churns out equity, fixed income and trading research for big name analysts and banks. It is a long way from the well-cooled corridors of Wall Street, and quarters are tight; business is up about 40 percent this year alone.

"This is one bulge-bracket bank," said Joel Perlman, president of Copal, pointing toward a team behind an opaque glass wall. "And this," he said, motioning across a narrow corridor "is another."

The banks edit and add to what they get from Copal, a research provider, then repackage the information under their own names as research reports, pitch books and trading recommendations.

Wall Street's losses are fast becoming India's gain. After outsourcing much of their back-office work to India, banks are now exporting data-intensive jobs from higher up the food chain to cities that cost less than New York, London and Hong Kong, either at their own offices or to third parties.

Bank executives call this shift "knowledge process outsourcing," "off-shoring" or "high-value outsourcing." It is affecting just about everyone, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and Citibank to name a few.

The jobs most affected so far are those with grueling hours, traditionally done by fresh-faced business school graduates research associates and junior bankers on deal-making teams paid in the low to mid six figures.

Cost-cutting in New York and London has already been brutal thus far this year, and there is more to come in the next few months. New York City financial firms expect to hand out some $18 billion less in pay and benefits this year than 2007, the largest one-year drop ever. Overall, United States banks will cut a total of 200,000 employees by 2009, the banking consultancy Celent said in April.

The work these bankers were doing is not necessarily going away, though. Instead, jobs are popping up in places like India and Eastern Europe, often where healthier local markets exist.

In addition to moving some lower-level banking and research positions to support bankers and analysts in New York and London, firms are shipping some of their top bankers from those cities to faster-growing developing markets to handle clients there.

Owing in part to credit weaknesses and billion-dollar charges from the subprime crisis, "people who were off-shoring high value jobs are increasing the intensity of that, and people who were not are now in the planning stage," said Andrew Power, a financial services partner at Deloitte Consulting.

Wall Street banks started cautiously sending research jobs to India a few years ago, hiring employees by the handful and running pilot programs with firms like Copal, Office Tiger, Pipal Research and Tata Consultancy Services.

In 2003, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley said they planned to move a few dozen research jobs to Mumbai, Lehman Brothers was working on a pilot program to create research presentations in India and both Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs said they had not moved any research to the country.

Five years later, the trickle is a flood. Third-party firms say they are seeing a 20 to 40 percent upswing in business this year alone.

Morgan Stanley has about 500 people employed in India doing research and statistical analysis. About 100 of Goldman Sachs' 3,000 employees in Bangalore are working on investment research.

JPMorgan has 200 analysts in Mumbai working for its investment banking operations around the world, doing industry analysis, and compiling data and charts for marketing materials. It has an additional 125 analysts in Mumbai supporting the bank's global research division.

Citigroup employs about 22,000 people in India, several hundred of whom work in investment research. Deutsche Bank has 6,000 employees in India, according to the bank's Web site. Deutsche started a pilot program to outsource some research in 2003, and would not provide any update.

Theoretically, as much as 40 percent of the research-related jobs on Wall Street, tens of thousands of jobs, could be sent off-shore, said Deloitte's Mr. Power, though the reality will be less than that.

The jobs off-shore are more likely to come from the investment bank and trading divisions of Wall Street firms, rather than the sales side, which produces analyst reports about companies and industries, said Andy Kessler, a former analyst who has written several books about Wall Street.

"There's a huge amount of grunt work that has been done by $250,000-a-year Wharton M.B.A.'s," Mr. Kessler said. "Some of that stuff, it's natural to outsource it."

He added, "These are middle of the office jobs, not back office, but they're not the people on the front line."

After research, the next wave may include more sophisticated jobs like the creation of derivative products, quantitative trading models and even sales jobs from the trading floors.

Proponents of the change say Wall Street's wary embrace of the activity may signal the beginning of a profound shift in the way investment banks are structured, with everyone but the top deal makers, client representatives and the bank management permanently relocated to cheaper locales like India, the Philippines and Eastern Europe.

In the future, executives in India like to joke, the only function for highly paid bankers in New York or London will be to greet clients and shake hands when the deals close.

"Wall Street has to look at the world differently," said Manoj Jain, the chairman of Pipal Research, a 400-person firm with offices in Chicago, Delhi and Gurgaon. Moving high-value jobs out of high-cost cities is "no longer a hypothesis," he said.

Pipal has "more work than it can take" right now, he said, and is seeing new clients beyond United States banks, like investment management companies and European financial firms. Like analysts at most offshore research operations, Pipal's number crunchers do not make recommendations, or generally put their name to the research they write. Instead, they work with the big-name bank or fund analyst to create the research that they want.

Permanently moving banking jobs out of New York or London is a touchy subject on Wall Street. Many investment banks, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, would not make executives available to discuss the topic.

Press officers for most banks asked not to be quoted or argued over semantics. For example, one spokesman said his bank's fast-growing India support operations are not an outsourcing facility, but a "center of excellence"; another argued that large cost cuts at his bank's New York and London headquarters were really "re-engineering" so the bank should not be included in such an article.

"Some of that is self-serving," Octavio Marenzi, chief executive of Celent, said of the impulse to keep quiet. "If I admit that research analysts can be off-shored to India, that means that I could too."

He said the "more advanced firms" will be able to use the cost differences and talent pools in India, and in the future in China, to their advantage.

A few banks have openly embraced off-shoring. Credit Suisse has 6,500 employees around the world working in lower-cost locations in India, Poland and Singapore. Of these about 500 are doing high-value jobs.

"We have people helping the execution of deals, data gathering, helping to build financial models, writing research, and doing scenario analysis," said Vineet Nagrani, head of knowledge process outsourcing at the bank.

The bank has small teams working on fixed-income research, credit research and foreign exchange research, "all of which are going to grow" Mr. Nagrani said. Credit Suisse is also doubling the number of investment bankers and private bankers in India who deal with local clients in the next 12 months.

The bank's clients, so far, seem happy. "As long as clients get a good quality product and can talk to their favorite research analyst" they do not care if the grunt work is done in New York or India, Mr. Power said.

Third-party outsourcing firms face two hurdles when winning this business, N. Chandrasekaran, chief operating officer of Tata Consultancy Services, said. First, banks need to be confident that third parties are capable of doing the work. Second, they need to decide whether they want to move the work out of the bank at all.

To address the first issue, Tata sets up pilot programs with clients. A new Tata office in Cincinnati, which will employ 1,000 people in three years, is intended to give the company a United States presence.

In addition to growth outside India, these outsourcing experts are bringing in Chinese nationals, Arabic speakers and even the very people they are replacing: business school graduates from America.

Daniel Peng, who will be a senior at Dartmouth next year, is working in the equity research department of Copal Partners as a summer intern. "I thought it would be a good emerging markets experience," he said.

Tellingly, Mr. Peng still hopes for an old-fashioned Wall Street job when he graduates. New York would be "ideal," he said.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/business/worldbusiness/12indiawall.html?