Business capabilities

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Business capabilities
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Business capabilities also called core competencies of business can be described as ability to achieve specific goals of company. Business capabilities are connected to[1]:

  • key resources needed to perform business activities
  • important processes and functions
  • unique competences of employees and managers
  • organizational model used to perform market operations
  • relationships with customers and suppliers
  • ability to make competitive products
  • efficient knowledge management and communication system

In business, you have to measure your strength for intentions.Therefore, it is a good idea to recognize the capabilities of your company even before starting your business. To assess the company's capabilities, you must first know what the company's capabilities are. Simply put - opportunities are advantages thanks to which your company can meet the needs of customers. The American author David Sexton in the book Marketing distinguishes between possibilities and benefits. According to Sexton, "benefits are what customers expect" while opportunities "produce benefits". The author distinguishes three types of possibilities:

  • skills - unique abilities, professional experience or specialist knowledge in a given industry
  • resources - which the company has at its disposal; these are human, material, financial, infrastructural resources, knowledge resources and imagination
  • characteristics - of a given product or service

Intuition in search of business opportunities

There is a fairly common belief that the best in business are those decisions that are made on the basis of intuitions. With the intuition that should be based on knowledge and experience. The same is true when looking for business opportunities. This is art, which on the one hand should be based on a systematic processand methods that allow you to look at customers, competitors or the market in a different way than the standard. This allows you to see those areas that many skip.On the other hand, the application of the method should not be a mechanical or non-reflective action. Sometimes business opportunities are not very obvious, and sometimes they are subject to considerable risk.

Why is it worth recognizing the company's capabilities?

Entrepreneurs do not always appreciate the importance of recognizing the possibilities of their business. Some beginner entrepreneurs count on the fact that their passion and enthusiasm will immediately be given to their clients. Of course, this may happen, but customers do not always share the euphoria of business owners, and then the beginnings of business can be difficult. Recognizing the company's capabilities helps to avoid such situations, because it gives entrepreneurs a number of advantages. Here are the most important of them[2]

  • The assessment of the possibilities will allow to meet the clients' needs. Understanding the needs of customers does not mean that all of them have to be implemented. If customers expect pharmaceutical companies to find a rejuvenating drug, that does not mean they have to do it. However, recognizing one's own capabilities will allow entrepreneur to answer the question: to what extent the company is able to meet the needs of its clients.
  • The opportunity assessment will determine the location of your company in relation to the competition. Once you evaluate your business opportunities, you will be able to compare them with the possibilities of competitors and thus find out what the company is better than the competition and what should improve.
  • The opportunity rating will allow you to determine what market shares you can get. If you realistically evaluate your options, you will be able to estimate whether you will be able to achieve the expected market share. If it turns out that you do not - you'll be able to think about how to increase the company's ability to increase your market share.

References

Footnotes

  1. Fleischer, J., Herm, M., & Ude, J. (2007).Business Capabilities as configuration elements of value added networks. Production Engineering, 1(2), 187-192.
  2. Barroero, T., Motta, G., & Pignatelli, G. (2010).Business capabilities centric enterprise architecture. In Enterprise architecture, integration and interoperability (pp. 32-43). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Author: Magdalena Lewicka