Corporate Benchmarking & Competitor Tracking

How can I better prepare my business for future challenges or opportunities in the environment?

Competitive advantage in today's business environment not only derives from your organization's intrinsic strengths, also depends equally on how you fare against your competitors. Synovate Business Consulting's Corporate Benchmarking & Competitor Tracking services rely on a methodical, analytical process to gather information about your direct and potential competitors, transforming it into relevant and actionable intelligence for senior executives. A holistic view on identified competitors includes assessments of their market positions, financial performance, capabilities and intellectual capital, management profiles, alliances and partnerships, key KPIs, and recent strategic actions in order to extrapolate their strategic intent. These inputs help us to benchmark your business against your industry peers, and reconfirm your intended market positioning or niche in the competitive landscape. By identifying your relative "weak spots", and gleaning best practice examples from your competitors, we can help you remain "fighting-fit" for the competitive battle.

A regular cycle of corporate benchmarking is defined as Competitor Tracking. We can keep track of where your competitors are headed, by monitoring their productions, announcements, targeted markets/segments, service performance, and customer perception. Each periodic tracking report is accompanied by our analysis of key implications on your business and recommended actions.

Key Account Maximisation

Are we cultivating the most value from our existing B2B customer base? What potential could a new target customer hold?

Developing and maintaining B2B accounts is an expensive and resource-intensive function. You need to be certain that a key account is "delivering" in terms of wallet-share and the volume and frequency of business in your favour. You also need to be assured that you are maximizing the total potential offered by this account, before moving on to acquire new accounts to grow your business – an even more challenging and time-consuming step. Synovate Business Consulting's Key Account Maximisation service is a holistic review of your current account performance, followed by assessment of its further growth/penetration potential by looking at your current perceived performance vis-´-vis competitors, customer's identified and potential pain points, and departments/geographies within the customer organization where your services may be extended to. A similar assessment can be made to evaluate a target account that you are considering developing, before resources are channelized in that direction, including the likelihood of success.

Pricing Analysis

How should I price my product/service considering customer perceptions, competitor pricing and operational costs?

In a world where competition is stiff and customers are demanding, companies often find themselves grappling with the problem of price competition or price sensitive customers. While the concept of price vs. value seems fairly fundamental, pricing methods such as cost-based, competitive, and value-based pricing, vary across each company even within the same industry. While determining your internal cost base and price margins may be fairly straightforward, having a good understanding of your market and value position would be imperative to set the right price position for optimum rewards in terms of volume profits, margins, and profitability, while staying competitive in the market place amidst seemingly competitive players. Adopting the appropriate pricing strategy can also help you redefine your playing field and out-rule your competition.

Business War-Gaming

It's a war out there! How do we win?

Succeeding in today's intensely competitive market place may sometimes require getting into the minds of your competitors, assessing their strategic and tactical response to your planned actions. Synovate Business Consulting is a regional pioneer in Business War Gaming methodology of advanced competitive analytics. War Gaming is a strategic planning exercise that simulates competition between businesses in a virtual but realistic marketplace, dynamically validating the viability of your planned strategies in a "safe" environment. This exercise helps your organization's managers prepare for major strategic moves from rivals, and cope with industry challenges such as consolidation, regulatory interventions, new market entrants, or product launches. The result is a fine-tuning of your intended strategy, while ensuring consensus and buy-in from a wider range of staff within the organization. The exercise involves 2-4 teams drawn from within your organization's ranks "playing the game" under Synovate's supervision over 2-3 days in an offsite setting – also fostering team building and new idea-generation.