For the organization to stand out in the marketplace, identifying core competences is worth to note. This is important also to leverage over competitors and to take advantage of competitive analysis.
Articulate a strategic intent that defines organization and its market. To support that intent identifying core competences is the step in doing so.
Based on the Harvard Business review article written by C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel, the following questions are posed to be addressed:
1. How long could we dominate our business if we did not control this competency?
2. What future opportunities would we lose without it?
3. Does it provide access to multiple markets?
4. Do customer benefits revolve around it?
Let us now take a look at each question and try to have a detailed description of its implication.
1. How long could we dominate our business if we did not control this competency?
The question asks for how long is the dominance pointed out the period of time the organization could withstand against competitors as one of the factors that core competences be identified.
For short-run, competitiveness derives from the Price/Performance attributes of current products. If I would relate it to my organization, since we are not dealing with the products but the services we render to the students, I can say price correlates to the performance attributes of the service. As for my observation, stated price is just for the performance of the faculties together with the facilities we have like the ratio of students to computer unit is 1:1 and all rooms are fully air-conditioned. This could affect the dominance period of the organization in the market.
For long-run, competitiveness derives from an ability to build at lower cost and at faster speed than competitors plus core competences that spawns unexpected products. In our organization, this ability is very dependent to HQ and HO. HQ has the power to approved newly offered program while HO has the power to decide the costs which will students be paying. If I were to analyze, HQ provides updated program that is suitable to match the industry’s need and HO provides also just cost of service upon the fluctuating cost in the market.
To answer the question of how long the dominance period, I can say it is not getting too long if the situation cited from the previous articles would not be addressed. For almost three years of my residency, I observed that the number of students is rising positively every year but what is happening now? Imagine the immediate effect right after his term; from approximately even hundred students we have drastically dropped to four hundred. An implicit understanding behind is the nearest downfall of the organization.
2. What future opportunities would we lose without it?
As the article cited an example about American and European companies such as GE, Motorola, GTE, Thorn and GEC chose to exit the color television business which they regard as mature, they lost out on a $20-billion-a-year opportunity.
Relating to my organization, we have this plan to become college. For sure this would require large amount of money for the expansion of the school. We could trade the offering of 2-year program to bachelor’s degree which is more likely profitable since it is ladderized program.
3. Does it provide access to multiple markets?
I think that our product which is our students is match to industry’s need because the curriculum they undertake is accordance to industry competence.
4. Do customer benefits revolve around it?
Well, our students benefited this advance courses against competitors like first year students have data structures and object oriented programming course already compared to other school they can take this courses when they reach second year.
For the organization to stand still in the market, core competences like Price/Performance attributes; ability to build at lower cost and at faster speed; trading in for future opportunities; accessibility to multiple markets; and benefits customer can gain are factors to be sharply considered.
Moreover, the following are pointers to take-away with regards to core competences that were enumerated in the Harvard business article:
· Core competence is about harmonizing streams of technology, organization of work, and the delivery of value
· Cultivating core competence does not mean outspending rivals
· Maintain world manufacturing dominance in core products, and you will reserve the power to shape the evolution of end products
· Top management’s real responsibility is a Strategic Architecture that guides competence building
· A company is capable to compete only if it is conceived of as a hierarchy of core competencies, core products, and market-focused business units.
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