Client: Manufacturing Products Company
Problem:
A provider of a complete line of multifunctional products for food, pharmaceutical, industrial and high-tech applications needed to identify the specific operational advantages and disadvantages of its primary competitor's products.
Scope of Work:
Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the competitor's products using publicly available resources.
What Quantalyst Did:
- Review competitor's financial statements and public filings.
- Derive non-competitive segment financials using industry studies showing estimated capacity by company and industry estimates for cost-of-goods sold (adjusted for known competitor advantages).
- Generated abstracted financial statements that eliminated non-competitive segments in order to create an "apples-to-apples" comparison between the two firms.
- Designed a competitor price survey that allowed the client's sales force to provide best estimates on competitor pricing.
- Determined competitor's sales volume per product line using the "apples-to-apples" comparison in conjunction with the price survey.
- Estimated the competitor's gross margin by product line.
Results:
- Management is able to identify and respond to the specific competitive advantages held by their primary competitor.
- The executive board for the client's parent company is assessing new strategic options based on hard facts about the competitive situation.
