Turning Your Company into an Engine of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Companies aim for sustainable competitive advantage because it allows them to meet the customers' needs better than their competitors. These are set of assets that are unique to your business and difficult to replicate at the same time by your rivals. In the era of globalization where everything is risky and unstable, businesses focus on developing sustainable competitive systems, not just ensure their existence but also grow in the same situation while becoming the perpetual engine of success. 

Let’s learn more about how you can create a company with a sustainable competitive advantage that helps you to beat the odds in the market. 

Strengthen Your Brand Identity  

According to Nobel Laureate, Ronald Coase expressed in his essay “The Nature of the Firm” companies sustain their existence even in highly uncertain conditions when they have a stronger identity. It continues to attract customer attention because of the desire of customers to be a part of something bigger than themselves that is provided by the brand identity easily. You can accomplish this by clarifying your purpose and creating value for your customers.  

Proper Depiction 

It’s important to depict your brand identity through your packaging as a reminder to your customers after running a successful marketing campaign. Custom packaging boxes with your brand logo and innovative design will help the buyers to create a sense of affiliation, and social cohesion. The same loyalty to your brand will drive the customer decision-making to pick your product from the retail over your competitors. 

Prioritize Speed & Decision Making 

For future-oriented companies, speed is important to arrive at the conclusive point for launching a product or any strategy soon. The main friction usually comes from the cultural bias that hinders agility and simplicity in the decisions making process. The best way to face any prejudices is to create an environment of open discussions where everyone presents their views to eliminate the hurdles. Eventually, quick decision-making will help your brand to outperform your peers in the market. 

Flatten Structure 

Flatten Structure in any company does not mean the absence of a hierarchy but it’s an organizational working mechanism where hierarchy takes a back seat. It helps to make the company fitter, and faster to reinforce business objectives with strong performance management and unlock considerable value. The best example of such a structure is Haier, it has no traditional bosses, layers, or middle management. 

Focus on Growth 

When companies focus on growth, innovation already becomes part of the equation automatically. It creates new opportunities to scale your company by gaining more market share and capitalizing on changing customers’ behavior. Meanwhile, innovative companies are not hesitant to break historical patterns to get their growth objectives. As a brand, you can take your past experiences as a guide but don’t become limited by them always. 

Accelerate Learning 

Educating your staff about new trends and the needs of the market is an important element that will make the company fluent in delivering value to customers. It cannot be achieved without developing an environment where you allow your employees to fail fast, learn and repeat the process by incorporating new aspects into the existing problem. 

Address the Customer Problems 

All the products of future-ready companies align with addressing customer problems efficiently. They develop the product faster by using the latest technology or automating the already establish unit to increase its capacity or modify it to get the required results. It builds the trust of customers, and other stakeholders in the company at the same time. 

Build Data Rich Platforms 

Companies that are destined to have sustainable competitive advantage, take data very seriously. For them, data is not just what is happening but is an opportunity to build valuable insights for future decisions. They use data to predict the changing patterns of customer behavior and transform their identity accordingly to keep themselves more relevant to customers’ needs and desires.  

Conclusion 

Sustainable competitive advantage in any company can be built by establishing a system of openness towards adaptability to new trends, and innovation, and eradicating stiff hierarchical structures to speed up the decision-making process. Meanwhile, in the fast-changing environment, you need to focus on strengthening the brand identity and be connected with your customers to remind them continuously through marketing campaigns about your values and purpose.