Helping leaders accelerate business growth
There is a formula for growing a business using a competitive advantage and Oxford University's Saïd Business School, Professor Michael Smets and Professor Emeritus Tim Morris from Oxford University's identified what it is. This knowledge is the foundation for the Competitive Advantage Accelerator, developed to help leaders accelerate business growth.
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator assists leaders to unlock growth by helping them understand how specific behaviors can benefit them, and also the watch-outs that hinder their progress. It does this by benchmarking their behaviors against elite global professional service firms to provide high value insights on areas that are accelerating or slowing their competitive advantage.
The leading tool for business development and demystifying strategic leadership, the Competitive Advantage Accelerator is trusted by global professional service firms and other service-centric organizations.
What access to the Competitive
Advantage Accelerator includes
Diagnostic
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator measures the four inter-related foundational components of expertise, service, reputation and relationships and the four energizing activities of bundling, communicating, partnering and learning to determine where behaviours are slowing, maintaining or accelerating a sustainable competitive advantage.
Analysis for individuals through to teams and groups.
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator diagnostic generates personalized reports with advice and recommended actions. Combined data from the tool provides an analysis for teams, groups and as an organisation. The Competitive Advantage Accelerator is designed with the option to measure progress and impact over additional points in time.
How the Competitive Advantage Accelerator is used
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Partners need to know the foundations for a competitive advantage and which foundations are their strengths. By knowing the activities that are accelerating or slowing the growth of client relationships, they can act individually and collectively to ignite growth. With professional service firms seeking growth in a competitive marketplace, the insights and recommendations from the Competitive Advantage Accelerator are based upon peer group benchmarks. Each individual and group receives actionable insights to succeed with business development – even if it is not their primary focus!
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The Competitive Advantage Accelerator can be used by client teams to review and improve their delivery to clients, helping them identify areas of opportunity to grow the account and enhance their client leadership. Individuals receive personal reports with recommended actions and the client team as a collective will see the areas that are accelerating or slowing their business development.
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Businesses where service is a foundation of their success face similar challenges to sustaining a competitive advantage as professional service firm. The Competitive Advantage Accelerator is used in service-centric businesses to provide the analysis and actionable insights on what is accelerating and slowing their ability to compete against their peers.
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The Competitive Advantage Accelerator (CAA) supports Senior Associates by providing a framework for how to be an effective partner and providing feedback on their approach – including strengths and watch-outs. The CAA uses benchmarked data to generate insights and enables Senior Associates to regularly assess their progress in order to update their personal development plans.
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The Competitive Advantage Accelerator (CAA) supports leaders making the transition from Expert to Orchestrator. The transition from a focus on being a technical expert to orchestrating others in a leadership role can be a difficult change. The CAA is used by companies in the technology sector to help guide leaders to be more effective strategic leaders. It clarifies their personal strengths and development needs in order to lead the business’s strategy effectively.
Trusted by
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Global professional service firms
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Fortune 500 organizations
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Executive education programs
Professor Michael Smets
Professor of Management
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator was developed by Communication Labs in collaboration with Professor Michael Smets and Professor Emeritus Tim Morris of Oxford University's Saïd Business School – authorities in the area of competitive advantage and leadership in professional service firms.
Background & Technical Details
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator was developed by Communication Labs in collaboration with Professors’ Michael Smets and Tim Morris, University of Oxford. It is based on their decades of research with professional service firms in sustaining a competitive advantage.
The work of Smets and Morris (also known as the Strategic Swirl) identified that traditionally professional service firms competed on their expertise, but that advantage erodes quickly as competitors compete on the same basis – making it difficult to distinguish a firm purely upon their expertise. In addition, as clients become increasingly sophisticated and expertise is being delivered through technology, to fulfill the trusted advisor role, the bar of adding value through expertise rises continuously.
In a highly competitive market, a competitive advantage can only be achieved through a range of the foundational components. Expertise sustains the services that clients perceive as relevant, excellent, and delivered to their expectations. Maintaining an excellent reputation rather than a focus on the firm’s brand, is also key. A track record that makes clients trust that what has been delivered for others, will also be deliver for them.
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Based on this reputation, firms must maintain the right kind of relationships. Primarily professionals have thought about client relationships being front and center. Increasingly they need to think about procurement departments, complementors, and other service providers, in order to distinguish themself as the one who can combine those relationships on behalf of the client. In a world that is uncertain and volatile, knowing how to maintain an ecosystem of relationships also allows expertise to evolve by learning through those relationships.
Applying in combination expertise, service, reputation and relationships, as the components of a competitive advantage, helps broaden the ways in which a firm can distinguish itself from the competition. Although foundational, a risk remains that these components are static and require energizing activities to stay ahead of the market.
For a firm to fully benefit the client, bundling of expertise is required to maximize the relevance of services for the client. Along with providing relevant high standard services to the client, this success must be communicated proactively to build a broader reputational footprint with existing clients and with potential clients. The enhanced reputation through communicating successes allows firms to develop new, stronger, deeper relationships. Through partnering firms can invest in those relationships outside of traditional commercial engagements to demonstrate a desire to be partners rather than be just service providers to the client. Partnering also provides the opportunity to learn through the relationships and be ready for the ‘next big thing’ for their clients.
Further technical details, samples and case studies are available upon request.