Link Between Core Competency and Competitive Advantage

In order to explore the link between core competency and competitive advantage, it is crucial to understand the implications of both terms. Competitive advantage could imply exploitation of resources resulting in an organisation’s distinctive position compared to competition. While most firms view the attainment of competitive advantage as earning greater investment returns, it can comprise of various aspects, for instance, enhancing environmental impact or capturing a greater market share can be viewed as a source of competitive advantage for a particular firm. Porter (1985) defined competitive advantage as the value delivered by a firm’s products that exceeds costs of creating that value. In this context, competitive advantage was achieved by a firm through adoption of either a differentiation or cost leadership strategy. However, competitive advantage does not solely rely upon implementation of value creating activities as the notion undermines and sometimes ignores to account for the potential of competitors. Therefore Continue reading

Business Objectives of Logistics Systems

The General objectives of the logistics can be summarized as: Cost reduction Capital reduction Service improvement The specific objective of an ideal logistics system is to ensure the flow of supply to the buyer, the: right product right quantities and assortments right places right time right cost / price and, right condition This implies that a firm will aim at having a logistics system which maximizes the customer service and minimizes the distribution cost. However, one can approximate the reality by defining the objective of logistics system as achieving a desired level of customer service i.e., the degree of delivery support given by the seller to the buyer. Thus, logistics management starts with as curtaining customer need till its fulfillment through product supplies and, during this process of supplies, it considers all aspects of performance which include arranging the inputs, manufacturing the goods and the physical distribution of the products. Continue reading

Risk Management Principles for Electronic Banking- Basel Committee Recommendations

Continuing technological innovation and competition among existing banking organisations and new entrants have allowed for a much wider array of banking products and services to become accessible and delivered to retail and wholesale customers through an electronic distribution channel collectively referred to as e-banking. However, the rapid development of e-banking capabilities carries risks as well as benefits. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision expects such risks to be recognised, addressed and managed by banking institutions in a prudent manner according to the fundamental characteristics and challenges of e-banking services. These characteristics include the unprecedented speed of change related to technological and customer service innovation, the ubiquitous and global nature of open electronic networks, the integration of e-banking applications with legacy computer systems and the increasing dependence of banks on third parties that provide the necessary information technology. While not creating inherently new risks, the Committee noted that these characteristics increased Continue reading

Case Study: Analysis of Organizational Culture at Google

Google Inc came to life with the two brilliant people as the founder of the company. Those two were Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Both of them are a PhDs holder in computer science in Stanford University California. In their research project, they came out with a plan to make a search engine that ranked websites according to the number of other websites that linked to that site. Before Google was established, search engines had ranked site simply by the number of times the search term searched for appeared on the webpage. By the brilliant mind of Larry and Sergey, they develop the technology called PageRank algorithm. PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of document, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance within the set. All this in-depth research leads to Continue reading

Credit Derivatives – Meaning and Definition

Rationale for Introducing Credit Derivatives Our present society lives on credit. Credit allows us to consume far more than what our savings can sustain. Therefore, credit is the very basis of consumerism. Our economy drives on the basic force of credit. What exactly is credit? Credit is parting with value today against a promise for value in future and this credit has inherent risk in it which is known as credit risk. Credit risk is the risk that the promise of payment in future may be broken. In other words, credit risk is an investor’s risk of loss arising from a borrower who does not make payments as promised. When the borrower fails to make payments, it is termed as default. So, credit risk is also known as default risk. This concept of credit risk can be looked at from two perspectives. Credit risk on the loans granted by banks Continue reading

The Strategic Role of HR

As people become the key competitive advantage in any industry, the human resource (HR) development function will and should play a more strategic role. It should go beyond its mere administrative support function to operations and front line departments. Whether or not company views HR strategically may decide whether market share, sales, or profits would increase or not. An effective HR strategy becomes equally decisive as the company‘s marketing strategy. Technology too is changing HR roles. As industries, specifically the services sector,  and the way they compete become knowledge-based, HR performance indicators will  shift from manpower and man-hours supplied to brainpower and brain hours delivered. The key result areas in people management will also shift from production and quantity to productivity and quality. Capability, measured in employee ideas generated and implemented, and productivity gained, will be more important than capacity, measured in man-hours available, man-hours lost, absenteeism, etc. The current Continue reading