STIE 1 Flashcards
External Audit
Identifying and Evaluating trends and events
Reveals key opportunities and threats
Identifies key variables that offer actionable responses
Must be able to respond offensively or defensively
Key External Forces
Economic
Social
Political
Technological
Competitive forces
Process of performing an external audit
Gather competitive intelligence and information
Communicate final list of key variables
Key external factors should be
Important to achieving long term goals
Measurable
Applicable to all competing firms
Hierarchical
External factors are more important than internal factors
TRUE
Firm performance is based more on industry properties
Economies to scale
Barriers to market entry
Product differentiation
The economy
Level of competitiveness
Internet has changed the very nature of opportunities and treats by
Altering the life cycles of products
Increasing the speed of distribution
Creating new products
Erasing limitations on traditional geographic markets
Changing the historical trade-off between product standardization and flexibility
CIO and CTO means
Chief Information Officer
Chief Technology Officer
Technological advancements can
Create new markets
Result in proliferation of new products
Change the relative competitive costs
Render existing products obsolete
Competitive forces:
An important part of an external audit is
Identifying rival firms
Determining SWOT
Characteristics of the most competitive companies
Market share matters
Understand what business you’re in
Fix it and make it better
Innovate or evaporate
Acquisition is essential to growth
People make a difference
No sub for quality
What is competitive intelligence
a systematic and ethical process for gathering and analyzing information
Three Basic objectives if a CI program
provide a general understanding of the industry
identify areas in which companies are vulnerable to and assess the impact strategic actions would have on competitors
identify potential moves that a competitor might make
What is market commonality
the number and significance of markets that a firm competes in with rivals
What is resource similarity?
the extent to which the type and amount of a firm’s internal resources are comparable to a rival