Signal and Systems Advantage: Shifting Away from Classic Business Strategies

In an ever-changing market, where financial instability and constant market fluctuations seem to be more frequent than ever, experts have determined that classic strategies are no longer sufficient for companies to comprehend all the factors of the business equation.

To better understand how strategic business decisions are shaping the future, The Boston Consulting Group released a report on New Bases of Competitive Advantage. Here, Adaptive Advantage is acknowledged as a strategy that takes the unpredictability of today’s environment into account and unlocks the dynamic qualities of competition.

In addition to Adaptive Advantage, the report introduces Signal Advantage and Systems Advantage as two of the five sources that support the main strategy, allowing companies to have a more inclusive view of the market.

Signal Advantage and The Information Age

Signal Advantage is a strategy that allows companies to gather empirical data and regain the ability to act rapidly based on it. Businesses that have adopted this strategy use those signals to make smarter business decisions and adjustments.

So how can your company get started?

Focus on the righ information
Extract relevant signals
Act upon them rapidly
Leverage them to reinvent business models
Don’t be afraid to reshape the information landscape of your industry

Systems Advantage: From Individualism to Collectivism

Systems Advantage is defined by The Boston Consulting Group as “the ability to build and maintain a system of companies whose high collective adaptability enables them to perform together more successfully and sustainably than their competitors.”

In other words, this approach sees the market as a complex system with many moving parts, which allows businesses to adapt to customer and production demands, periods of high uncertainty and even the process of entering a new market.

“Traditional approaches to strategy focus primarily on the individual firm or business unit and are largely silent about managing a network of players beyond its boundaries.”

Adaptive Insights, for example, allows companies to develop connections with partners, customers and suppliers through cloud solutions that encourage interactions among multiple players.

Make the Change!

Shifting away from classic business strategies can seem challenging when the appropriate tools aren’t available to your organization. For this reason, finding a vendor that provides the right framework for information gathering and analysis is key when developing new strategies.

With more than 10 years of experience, InnoVergent, in partnership with Adaptive Insights, can help your business attain market leadership by planning better, budgeting faster and forecasting smarter.