• Attract and keep the best people?
• Become more agile and responsive to market opportunities?
• Become stronger, more robust, and more able to withstand the pitfalls and challenges of your marketplace?
• Become the 'supplier of choice' that others strive to supply?

Your Competitive Strength Report (CSR) will stimulate a top level dialogue focused on answering these questions.

Exceptional value for money? Zero labour costs, only 40 minutes input from up to 8 of your people and you set the timetable. Your CSR can be generated within 48 hours (or sooner). It is packed with advice tailored to your current competitive strength, and comes complete with a 1-hour CEO debrief and a guide to facilitating your discussions and decision-making.

Click here to request an Executive Summary

or continue on for further explanation and to explore the site. Thank you.

Any business process improvement tool must be relevant to your needs and practical. It must be a significant step in your strategic planning process. Any tool must help you increase your competitive advantage and deliver business results. Unfortunately, many do not.

Too often the analysis component only tells you much of what you know already and the action advice just gives you more things to do and keeps you busy!

The Competitive Strength report is bought to you by The Achievement Network, an international business consulting firm with a 15- year track record of assisting organisations improve their business processes, think differently during their key strategic planning process and, therefore, maximise their competitive advantage.

The acid test is…will this tool help me maximize my organisation's competitive advantage?

What gives you your competitive advantage?

It is your ability to bring together every attribute of your business, to work seamlessly to deliver a standard of Excellence your competitors cannot achieve.

Can I assess my organisation's competitive advantage?

Yes. You can measure it and compare it to organisations that achieved the ultimate competitive advantage. These organisations have gone beyond Excellence to achieve competitive freedom. Recognition of their achievements came through internationally acknowledged Excellence awards.

Is your business outstripping your competition, leading it, keeping up with it, or trailing behind?

The gap in competitive advantage between outstripping and trailing your competition is 67%. The benefits of outstripping your competition are unequivocal … 43% more sales growth than the average and 44% more net worth than the average.

These headline findings are the results of an objective study by Dr Vinod Singhal of The Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA.   more...

Are these results relevant to you?

In short, yes. The findings of Dr Singhal's research are relevant to every business, including not-for-profit organisations. He focused solely on the financial rewards of businesses achieving and sustaining Excellence or better. He analysed the published accounts of 600 premier Excellence award winners covering the widest spectrum of organisations - size, location, and service, industry or market sectors.

His findings are universally applicable…to any business, of any size, in any market, anywhere.

Can any CEO afford to ignore his shattering insights?

In short, no! The research results are unequivocal. Excellence delivers massive competitive advantage. This is quantified in the table above… 44% more sales growth and a 44% increase in net worth over the average achieved across a period of 10 years.

To have achieved these business results organisations had to be strong and fit. Competitive advantage demands robust systems and fluid, agile processes that can withstand all the pressures of 21st century trading.

What can weaken any organisation?

Competitive advantage can be seriously compromised or even destroyed by the Abyss. The Abyss is the crevasse that sits beneath every business, your business, threatening to undermine it at any time. It represents those forces that impact upon your competitive position and the sustainability of your business.

These forces can divert you at best and destabilise or permanently damage your business at worst.

What makes up the Abyss?

Common components that impact upon all businesses include Compliance (legislation and regulation), Capacity Limitations, Capability Constraints, Market Forces, Supply Chain failures, and Politics and Economic Policy.

Each business will also have its own issues that divert attention, overstretch critical resources and threaten to undermine progress and sustainability.

Why is the Abyss something you need to focus on now?

The forces influencing the Abyss used to grow more slowly than many businesses. Even twenty five years ago compliance, technology, and influences of the global market exerted some force on businesses. These things were evolving, slowly. Today they can set the agenda.

Today, the Abyss is growing so fast it outruns 67% of all organisations. In turn it reduces competitive advantage and undermines sustainability.

How can you assess and compare your organisation's competitive advantage… its strength and fitness?

Commission your Competitive Strength Report

This business process improvement tool will…

» Enable you to assess 15 aspects of your business that give you your competitive advantage » Compare your organisation's competitive strength with the premier award winners » Highlight differences of perception, understanding or priority within key stakeholders     » Reveal individual insights into critical aspects of your organisation's competitive strength » Quantify your organisation's risk exposure to against 60 relevant forces that make up your Abyss     » Guide you and your top team to extract the maximum learning from these reality checks » Promote purposeful, focused dialogue on how to maximise your competitive advantage » Lead to decisions and commitments to act that maximise your competitive advantage     » Alert you to the leadership approaches necessary to achieve and sustain Excellence » Inform you about what it takes to achieve and sustain Excellence in all that you do

Your organisation's Competitive Strength Report will be 60 pages packed with comparative analysis, new concepts, thought-provoking exercises and tailored advice on leading your organisation towards achieving Excellence in everything it does.

10 major outcomes from your Report

• Invaluable learning and insights in return for the minimum draw on executive time
• A quantified definition of your organisation's potential to maximise its competitive advantage

• The widest understanding of the forces that could or do diminish your competitiveness
• Perceptive, purposeful dialogue on what matters and on what must be addressed

• Definitions of Excellence that relate to what your organisation does and how it does it
• Consensus on priorities and resource allocation decisions

• Decisions to take action on the process of maximising your competitive advantage
• Buy-in and commitment from your top team and key stakeholders

• A way forward to maximise your organisation's competitive advantage

Your Competitive Strength Report will be most beneficial early in the process of…

Preparing for a strategic review - get a lateral approach to considering options Improving consensus and cohesion at a senior level Increasing the rate at which your organisation achieves its Vision and realises the benefits Moving your organisation on from working hard to becoming more effective and robust Achieving a sea-change in attitudes, cultural barriers or other obstacles to Excellence Seeking new markets and/or reverse declining market share and margins Meeting the challenge from new, better, faster and lower cost (economy) market entrants Cementing a merger or acquisition - at the time or when the benefits are still to be realised Improving the robustness and fluidity of the supply chain or distribution channels Gaining and/or securing a position of market dominance

Generating your organisation's Competitive Strength Report

• You can choose to assess your whole organisation or any whole subset or division within it.
• It is generated from inputs from between 2 and 8 senior colleagues.  more...
• Respondents simply complete two questionnaires - Competitive Strength and the Abyss.  more...
• It takes each person only 30 - 40 minutes to complete both questionnaires
• It can be on recipients desks within 72 hours of ordering, sooner if you require it

Show me an extract from a Report ...

What investment does your Competitive Strength Report require?

Previous customers tell us they were surprised at the price - so much for so little.

prices shown exclude any applicable VAT,GST or Sales Tax

Currency	Price	Your Added Value Package includes
AUD	2,995	A bonus 1-hour telephone or video link debrief for the Chief Officer (worth £400). + A guide to facilitating your meetings to get the best from your Report (worth £500)
EUR	2,100
GBP	1,495
USD	1,950
ZAR	17,500

"Our top team used the Competitive Strength Report to pinpoint and discuss critical factors in the success of our business. We were surprised to discover how easily the Report highlighted important differences in emphasis and perspective between the directors. These insights enabled us to review and refocus on our priorities and get consensus on the real strategic issues that lie ahead'

George Grieve (MD - Vital Health Foods) Cape Town

Are there alternatives? You could commission a major consultancy to analyse your performance but these exercises tend to be very time consuming and could cost their clients anywhere between $50,000 and $250,000 depending upon the size of your organisation! Alternatively, you could buy a competitive analysis benchmarking report for your industry or service sector. They will cost you less but they give you a lot of information about others and tell you nothing about yourself and the business you run.

Click here to Commission your Competitive Strength Report

Click here to Download an Executive Summary

This summary will help you recommend the Competitive Strength Report to your Chief Officer and senior colleagues.

Contact us

Should you have any questions please contact me directly on +44 (0)7973 198 468 or send me an e-mail.

I will be pleased to answer your questions.

I hope your Competitive Strength Report prompts and informs the dialogue you need to move your business (further) in the direction of Excellence and the competitive advantage it brings.

Terry Murphy
Executive Author
The Achievement Network