Innovative strategies for competitive advantage
Among many professional leaders in the online recruitment industry, Spring is also one of the leading professional recruiters. It is an expert recruiter in the field of telecommunication and IT. It operates in over 60 countries and is a part of the leading HR provider in the world, the Adecco Group. It has an experience of over 30 years in the recruitment sector and it places thousands of professionals every year into roles of rewarding in the telecommunication and IT fields and challenging. The company mainly focuses on the recruitment of professionals and middle to senior level managers having specialization in their fields. The professionals are also recruited by Spring for employment consultations. The effective and expert recruitments give a positive benefit to its clients and this is what Spring gets respect for (Spring, 2018).
Today in the globalizing world, organizations are very concerned about their business growth. To evaluate their business growth they need to consider various things at a time. Some of the business growth opportunities that are to be concerned by small medium enterprises like Spring Recruiter are discussed as following
Today SMEs are very concerned about their competitive advantage. In the present competitive world for a business organization need to take some competitive advantages to be sustainable for a longer time-period. In this context, “Spring” recruiters always come-up with innovative ideas to attract their users. In this order to get, a competitive advantage the company is socializing its business at different social networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and many more. By doing so the company can take some advantage by advertising, its business on different platforms where youth is engaged so much. Such an analysis of competitive advantage includes different factors like political scenario, the market environment in terms of business, legal consideration of the business (Rodríguez and Nieto, 2016).
Political factor: The political factor will help the organization to recruit as much as of the candidates it can if the policies of the government are in favour of the company. If there are no restrictions on the migration of the candidates and the policies framed are favourable, it will help to grow the business.
Economic factor: By maintaining the quality of work, Spring can grow its business. It needs to employ the best suitable candidates for its clients who can fulfil their requirement.
Social factor: If the organization fulfils the requirements of the society, it will be beneficial for it in the way to grow its business. Spring can serve the best experts to its loyal clients, which will set a positive example for other clients.
Technological factor: Spring has to keep in mind the technological advancement and then recruit the candidates accordingly. If it recruits the less technically skilled employees, it will not be fruitful for the organization and its clients as well.
Legal factor: Taking the most important factor into consideration is important before entering into any operation in the business. If the candidate is legally eligible to enter into the particular job irrespective of any legal restriction, it will be the most favourable option for Spring.
Factors affecting business growth
Environmental factor: The environmental factor simply tells about the nature of being environmentally friendly. If the organization works environment-friendly, it will be beneficial in the interest of the organization (Srdjevic, Bajcetic and Srdjevic, 2012).
In order to grab growth opportunities, new products and services are always successful. Innovative products always attract customers for its uniqueness. Therefore, Spring Recruiters introduce new products periodically as an evaluating element of its growth opportunity. In terms of its growth opportunities, the organization is efficiently looking forward to the introduction of such innovative products.
Product life cycle is also an opportunity for the growth of an organization. Product lifecycle describes the development of a new product over time in the organization. A shorter product life cycle encourages organization for more innovation. In this context, the product life cycle of an organization is an important consideration for the growth evaluation in SMEs.
While evaluating the growth of an organization especially in the case of SMEs, Ansoff’s Growth Vector Matrix is also considered significant. Ansoff’s matrix is a proposed paper, which works as a marketing strategy by using four strategies: market development, market penetration, product development, and diversification. When these four strategies are displayed visually, it creates the Ansoff Growth Matrix. This matrix system is used for a variety of business purposes. This matrix is mostly used for market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification of the organization. All these are the indicators of growth of an organization that makes this matrix as an important consideration for the growth evaluation of SMEs.
In the globalizing world, an organization’s growth is evaluated by its market co-ordination with other competitive organization. In the context of this, SMEs look for maximum collaboration with several organizations in the same sector. This collaboration of organizations highlights their market growth in the global market. In this way, while evaluating the growth of SMEs in the international market, their collaboration is an important consideration (Dawes, 2018).
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Strength The strength in the context of growth in Spring could be the recruitment of more and more experts and consultants. So that, it could increase its market share and increase its market standing. The consultants will also help it in international expansion by influencing the candidates. |
Weakness The weakness of Spring could be its competitors and the benefits provided by them to its candidates. |
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Opportunities Opportunities for Spring could be more requirements of the candidates by its client companies for which it works. Spring can grasp the opportunities by recruiting candidates with more skills and abilities, which can help it to enhance its business Ghaffari, Delgosha and Abdolv, 2015). |
Threats The threats for such business operations could be the political changes made in its domestic country or any international market. Because it will affect its recruitment policies and the ratio of recruiting, the eligible candidates will fall. For example, Indian candidates moving to the USA for better job opportunities could be stopped by the president in coming years by introducing new policies. |
Grow organically: It simply means that expanding the business by selling more of the products and acquiring more of the customers. Spring can use this measure by recruiting more of the expert consultants so that the business could be expanded. It also involves a risk of not getting appropriate candidates or candidates as per the requirement. The reason behind it could be the less of the people knowing about the, therefore, the organization needs to promote itself in a way to attract the candidates.
Market exit: When the market in which the business is operating is not growing, the organization should leave the market. Growth always does not mean getting bigger, sometimes it is better to get out of the market is a good option. The risk involved in this measure is losing the goodwill of the organization and trust of customer and clients. In that case, it can be mitigated by solving all the misconceptions in the mind of the customers and clients.
Be the low-cost provider: Organic growth can also be increased by cutting the cost dramatically. In the language of experts, this technique is called ‘jellyfish strategy’, which means going up when the tides are up and going down when the tides are down. However, it involves a risk of favourable and unfavourable market conditions and its impact on the business of the organization. Therefore, to mitigate this risk the organization should take the decisions accordingly.
New products and the product life cycle
Do nothing: It is a rare pathway to follow. It is an everyday choice made by the companies. Overstatement can be named as a choice. It is planned by a few board members as to do nothing strategy. However, it can lead to a risk of employees getting into negligence of their authorities and responsibilities; in that case, the organization has to form the statements accordingly (Chowdhury, Lau and Pittayachawan, 2016).
Bank loans: For debt, financing bank loans are like the supermarket. All the asset needs are fulfilled by them being it short, mid or long term requirement. However, borrowings from the bank have its own merits and demerits. Banks provide a secured loan service to the customer and on the other hand, the borrowers have to pay the amount borrowed by them on the time due.
Crowd fund: To finance a large number of individual’s crowd funding is used in the small amounts in a new venture. Through social media and websites crowd, funding makes an easy accessibility in vast networks.
Peer-to-Peer: It is a method of lending and borrowing money from one person to another without the involvement of any official financial institution. It consumes more time, risk, and efforts.
Angel and venture finance: When the investment is done in small start-ups, it named as angel investment. Eventually, angel investments are made through family and friends. On the contrary, finance provided the investors to small businesses and start-ups, which are believed to have, a potential of long-term capital growth called venture capital.
A bank loan is considered as the most appropriate source of funding. As the banks provide a secured loan service and they are authorized under the guidelines of the Central Bank of the particular country. It also provides loan on a cheaper rate of interest in comparison to private. Spring can also raise funds by taking the loan from the bank, as it seems to be a most flexible source of fund. However, the company can use other sources as well for raising the funds (Baldock and Mason, 2015).
As the bank loan has been considered as the appropriate option but the company can also raise fund through angel and venture finance. As sources stated above are specifically made for investing in small start-ups and businesses. It will help organizations like Spring to raise funds successfully in order to meet its requirements (Baldock and North, 2015).
The statement of mission defines the business of the company, the objective, and the method to reach the objective. The vision expresses the future desired position of the company which the company wants to attain. To provide the company’s goal, purpose and values statements of vision and mission are made. As a start-up company, the vision and mission of Spring are to grow more in its own field. Its main objective is to recruit more of the expert advisors so that it can increase its business on an international level (Anderson and Jamison, 2015). The areas on which the mission and vision of the company are based are as follows:
Ansoff’s Growth Vector Matrix
Strength: The strength is that it only recruits middle to senior level managers and professionals. It will help Spring in capturing the large market, encouraging and attracting more of the candidates through its best consultancies.
Identification of opportunities: The opportunity for spring will be the pool of effective candidates for its client companies. It will be beneficial for the company to recruit more and more experts so that the agenda of scaling the business could be achieved.
Ethics and values: The ethics and values for Spring are to save the interest of the candidates it is going to recruit. To see the overall impact of its policies and procedures on the recruitment process for the candidates is the main agenda of the organization.
Expectations of stakeholders: Identifying and considering the interest of candidates should not be the only aim of the organization. It should also think about the interest of its existing employees, clients, creditors, and shareholders (Church and Waclawski, 2017).
Although investors are the key essentials of any business, they need to be interested in the business. In this way, the organization has to create an interest of its investors for a long time. To create this interest every organization comes-up with an innovative business idea. This idea is presented in the form of a business plan before investors. Spring Recruiters being an online recruiter wants to attract job seekers therefore in order to attract new investments they need to come-up with an idea that attracts more online job seekers.
Transfer the ownership: Transferring the ownership to someone who can preserve the legacy is the better option than the liquidation of the business. Interested parties might be employees, customers, any family member, or children. If the management takes it, they make sure the operation of the business. Selling to the family can also result in jealousies due to promotions in the business by the other member (Flynn, 2018).
Acquisition: One has to look for a strategic fit acquirer who can buy the company and expand it into a new market or can offer a new product to its existing customers. The strategic buyer pays more than the worth of the business. However, on the same side, it might clash if there are any cultural changes acquisition may become difficult.
The launch of a new product with the same brand name: As done by Nike, similarly any business can launch a new product as per the demand in the market. By adopting this strategy, the company can cover its cost and losses. However, launching a new product will lead to too much marketing, which will lead to an increase in cost (Hawkey, 2017).
If the comparison is made between the launch of a new product with the same brand name and acquisition, the launch of a new product is taken as a better option. Because it serves as a benefit to the entrepreneurs as they need not liquidate their organizations either they just to identify the market demand and bring the product.
The company should analyse the market demand properly and use less costly mechanisms for the promotion of new product so that it can cover the cost (Uyarra, Shapira, and Harding, 2016).
The importance of collaboration for SME growth
The organization can implement the above option by examining the records of the company and analysing the losses incurred due to a particular product due to any external or internal reason. The organization needs to analyse the demand of the customers and launch the product accordingly. However, it has to keep in mind the marketing strategies adopted by the organization so that it could cover the cost (Vanden and Pietersma, 2015).
Conclusion:
By studying the various parameters, it can be elucidated that the SMEs may adopt Ansoff’s growth matrix model for growth opportunity and this will help in expanding the business on the international level. This will satisfy the international business strategy of attracting the more advanced candidates from the different area will be fulfilled. It also uses SWOT for analysing the competitive advantages. Using PESTLE an idea was drawn for the company in order to build positive actions to meet a competitive advantage. Considering the PESTLE analysis, the agenda of international business strategy is fulfilled as it provides knowledge that is more external to the company. To analyse the risk and mitigate it adopts various pathways. While raising the fund it has to compare the sources, which could be more feasible to adopt, as it is a crucial decision. The most important decision made by the SMEs is when they need to plan for succession or exit for the business. They need to find out the strategic jet to know which are the best method and the best person to hand over the business or to be in a merger with.
References:
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