How Core Competencies Can Grow Your Company

By FH Cooper | Leave a Comment

Core competencies, though defined by many authors, we feel comes down to being a simple marketing tool. It is the unique process in which your company excels, is difficult for others to imitate, and can affect your bottom line in a very positive way.

Ask yourself, “What do we do best?”

Then look at the other processes and see if you can-

• outsource them more economically than you can do them in house
• examine existing resources and how they can be expanded to produce new products for new markets
• estimate needed capital investment against the return and the time frame
• understand that new needed competencies may take the form of people, processes, technologies or contacts.

Bath Iron Works in Maine experienced a problem when the government contracts stopped. They realized their core competency was not ship building but the design, manufacture, integration and testing of large, complex structures. They put their welders to work manufacturing everything from boilers to nuclear containment vessels. The transition was successful.

After you have identified all the new competencies you need to increase and expand your manufacturing capabilities, you need to develop an action plan. Again, ask yourself –

• “What new products should we make?”
• “Is the market we are looking at dynamic or static?”
• “Should we try to create and entirely new market that does not presently exist?” NOTE: Both market research and competitive intelligence can be very helpful here.

If you are not familiar with some of these new markets, and need help to answer some of the questions of strategy and direction, consider another effective marketing tool-

the “Alliance”.

Franklin Cooper © 2017