What are Competitor Best Practices and Why are they Necessary in the Pharma Industry?
The pharma industry is considered among the most challenging, competitive, and important industries worldwide, and companies must prepare for extremely high barriers to entry, frequent market fluctuations, and a constant change in consumer needs with competitor best practices. As various industries evolve, the pharmaceutical industry is also exposed to significant change, and companies must work to stay ahead of competitors at all times. This has led to the increased utilization of data and analytics within business in the pharma industry, and caused companies to leverage competitor best practices, strategic procurement, automation and digitization, and other processes. Leveraging strategic and data-driven processes such as these provides companies with unparalleled insights into their rapidly changing market, enable improved decision-making, promotes more comprehensive strategies, and provides them with a significant competitive edge. As industries enter the new decade, 2021 has been a year of major transformation, change, and preparation for a new era. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and expected effect of rising digitization will significantly mold the future of the pharma industry. Therefore, companies must start implementing unparalleled competitor best practices to become industry leaders, and maintain a strategic edge.
What are the Key Competitor Best Practices?
Assess Various Qualities: To develop a clear comparison between competitors, companies must list, assess, and compare a host of different, necessary qualities displayed by all companies. This includes costs incurred, prices of offerings, quality, delivery and lead time, supplier relationships, customer satisfaction and loyalty, profitability, and more. Limiting to one particular factor can lead to skewed and uninformed business decisions, and companies will fail to accurately assess the focal differentiators between the companies. Since every business, procurement, and supply chain function is a combination of various processes, decisions, departments, operations, and costs, it is necessary to assess all relevant contributors to the overall success or failure of a competitor.
Focus on Tangible Differentiators: When comparing with competitors, there are various factors that companies must account for, as detailed in the previous point. This includes price, costs incurred, quality of products and services, consumer satisfaction, and more. However, companies consist of various other intangible qualities as well, such as business ethics, brand, and relationships with employees. Companies must ensure they focus on tangible differentiators, as intangible factors such as ethics and brand personality cannot be effectively assessed, and are highly subjective as per target groups, consumers’ personal preferences, and more. To gain an accurate and efficient insight into the differentiation between the businesses, this is crucial competitor best practice.
Conduct a Thorough Analysis: When attempting to compare businesses, assessing external factors is equally crucial to understanding the success of a competitor. This includes their geographical region, placement of suppliers, marketing efforts, market share percentage, and strategies to adapt to changing market dynamics. Tracking and evaluating these factors can give companies a more comprehensive and effective insight into the overall functioning of a business. It also crucial to assess what resources are available to the competitor, gaps in their abilities, their assets and equipment, and sales tactics. Competitor best practices that encourage a detailed and thorough analysis can serve as the make-or-break differentiator in the quality, accuracy, and effectiveness of competitive analysis.
Establish a Wide Range: A common error made by companies attempting to conduct a competitive analysis, is failure to account for all potential competitors, and limit the range of companies they assess and evaluate. Although industry leaders are major players and must be closely analyzed, as new or growing companies in a market as competitive as the pharma industry, it is equally important to account for companies at a similar market position, new entries with strong business relationships, small companies aiming to expand, or new businesses with unparalleled relationships. Often companies fail to account for other potential competitors and limit their analysis to industry leaders or benchmarks, this can provide inaccurate data and minimize chances for improvement, making a wide range an extremely necessary competitor best practice.
Implement Changes: The purpose of competitor analysis surpasses simply collecting and surveying data, and must be used to make necessary adjustments, adaptations, or improvements to make the analysis successful or effective. Once the analysis is completed, companies must utilize the procured data to compare their offerings, delivery periods, quality, and other evaluate qualities, and make necessary changes to achieve higher success, or keep pace with competitors. While a company may be more proficient or successful in certain aspects, there is commonly room for improvement or adaptation, and leveraging that opportunity is necessary for long-term success. Among various necessary competitor best practices, implementing change makes a competitor analysis effective, necessary, and successful.
Success Story
Post the COVID-19 pandemic, changing technology, and consumers’ significantly altered expectations and needs have transformed the industry significantly, giving rise to a major need for companies to prepare efficiently, and stay ahead of the market. Due to the rising demand, there has been a substantial rise in competition and new companies are entering the routinely entering the market, causing challenges for established businesses. A leading pharma company based out of Western Europe witnessed a significant decline in profitability due to their inability to rapidly adopt new technologies, keep pace with the evolving market, and stay ahead of new companies with current equipment and technologies. To efficiently assess the market, identify their shortcomings, and establish themselves as industry leaders, the company chose to partner with SpendEdge and leverage our expertise in advising competitor best practices. With insights and guidance from our experts, the company carried out an efficient, accurate, and extremely helpful assessment of their competitors. The data procured helped them identify, evaluate, and adopt the most effective and beneficial technologies, marketing approaches, digital systems and platforms, and solutions. SpendEdge provided the company with unparalleled competitor best practices that led to a substantial increase in sales, profitability, efficiency, consumer satisfaction, and market share.
