Competitor accounting
Competitor accounting costs by providing resources to competitors, cost structure, product development, market share, business strategy, and other financial and non-financial information, and conduct in-depth analysis to help managers in strategic positioning, to maintain a comparative advantage, to obtain excess returns A modern accounting management.
Competitor accounting - the content and methods of Competitor accounting 1. Competitor cost assessment For in the fierce competitive environment in the enterprise, to develop sustainable competitive advantage and gain a competitive advantage in position, they must themselves from competitors by analyzing the competitive situation to determine the competitive strategy of enterprises. This requires that companies must understand the cost of competitors and to evaluate it. Enterprises can use this method to calculate the amount of profit to compare costs to reflect the company's strategic position changes and make corresponding decisions. By analyzing the cost structure of each of the major competitors and monitor changes in market share, companies can see their competitive position fluctuation and different strength of competitors. Enterprises can also rival the value chain of the investigation, analysis and simulation, measured out the competitor's costs and compare with to determine the cost of business and competitors on the strengths and weaknesses, combined with results of the analysis to determine a strategy to avoid weaknesses defeated his opponent. In addition, the demolition of analysis is to understand the cost structure of competitors, the common method. It is broken down into components of a competitor's product in order to identify the product features and design characteristics, infer the production process in order to analyze and estimate the product cost. In actual analysis, because companies do not have direct information, to assess the cost of competitors is usually very difficult. But generally available public data, as well as with buyers, suppliers and other people's interviews, to directly estimate the value of the activities of competitors, some of the costs in general is still possible. For competitors who can not directly estimate the value of cost, activity, companies can compare themselves and their competitors, the method, the key is to determine the competitor's business activities in these values, the relevant cost driver and its relative position , then the use of cost drivers to estimate the behavior of competitors, the cost difference.
2. Competitive position monitoring Competitive position within the industry through the supervision is in the evaluation and supervision of its competitors in sales, market share, sales volume, unit costs and return on sales and other data to analyze the situation of competitors. This information can be competitors for the assessment provide the basis for marketing strategies. In order to obtain relevant information, companies need to build competing information systems. The system is a lot of information sources, such as publicly archived reports, competitors, business manager of the speech to securities analysts, business press, sales staff, competitors, customers and suppliers of common, market research companies, industries, among others. The system should be capable of collecting, compiling, sorting, analysis, transmission and other functions. Through the information system businesses can analyze and understand the competitive long-term objective, the current strategy and its actual ability to predict changes in competitors may adopt the strategy and its impact on their competitive position.
3. Competitor performance evaluation Performance against its competitors purpose of the evaluation was to assess the competitive advantage of competitors to find a key factor in their competitive advantage, and its own performance as a benchmark, to conduct a systematic, structured learning and beyond. Benchmarking analysis of the company and between the present and future competitors, the difference reflects the company's relative position, so that enterprises continuously improve their business activities, to seek an effective way to improve performance and methods. Comprehensive evaluation of the performance of the competitors should be the financial and non-financial indicators combined method to dynamically measure. Traditional performance evaluation of multi-use financial indicators, these indicators are mostly matters of the past reflected in the summary results of the implementation, but it is difficult to explain how the future profitability. Performance evaluation in the competition, the emphasis is on performance measurement and motivation to reflect, that is, for those who can impact on company's future operating results of the factors to be evaluated. Therefore, a large number of future performance produces driving functions of large non-financial indicators such as market share, customer satisfaction, product quality, business processes, marketing strategies, human resources, corporate performance will be measured play a bigger role.
Rival Accounting - Features Competitor accounting Competitor accounting and conventional accounting is different from it is based on corporate strategic positioning as the center of the dynamic accounting information system, has the following characteristics:
1, rival accounting on a "contingency" Management (ContingentManagement) guided by the idea, with dynamic The development of science and technology to shorten the product's life cycle; the growing process of economic globalization and Internet technologies to promote the growing popularity in the market and uncertainty; consumer preference for personalization and diversification exacerbate the global market. In this rapidly changing market environment, competitors, accounting for contingency theory as a guide, to provide enterprises with information on competitors, dynamic monitoring to enable enterprises to truly know ourselves, and work out with the external environment to adapt to, and from time to time with the dynamic market changes strategic programs to adjust to dynamic braking, dynamic won.
2, competitor strategic management accounting is an important part of accounting, with extraversion Strategic management accounting is from a strategic height, centering on the enterprise, customers and competitors have formed the "strategic triangle" to provide their own resources based on the external environment and internal and external information for strategic management services to corporate accounting. Thus, competitors, accounting is "3C strategic triangle model" in the corner, the main provider of enterprise business environment, one of five elements - a competitor with strategic relevance of the export-oriented information to enable enterprises to a single enterprise from a narrow walk space out of the use of the relative costs, relative prices, relative market share of other domestic and foreign comparative indicators, the enterprise "value chain" to improve and perfect, maintain and create long-term competitive advantage.
3, competitors accounting accounting information provided by a greater emphasis on the relevance and timeliness of Competitors, the primary task of accounting is to provide the strategic positioning of this business significantly correlated with timely information to help enterprises to measure risk, insight into the opportunities, and understand business changes in the external environment and internal conditions, based on the comparative advantage to carry forward, solid and promotion strategies status. In view of corporate internal and external environment conditions, the complexity and variability, timely refresh the information base, timely amend and improve the importance of the strategic plan is self-evident. For the relatively less reliable but relevant information, as long as the disclosure of information, while disclosure of its measurement methods and assumptions can be, so that users of information may be information on which to assess risks and adjust their strategic decision-making.
Competitor accounting - the use and methods of Porter Michael Porter (MichaelPorter) in the famous "competitive advantage" in his book pointed out: the fierce competition among the existing competitors, the extent affecting the industry, an important force in the profitability of one, usually by the following factors: industry growth, fixed the cost of high and low, cyclical overproduction, product differentiation, trademarks, know-how, conversion costs, concentration and balance, the information complexity, diversity of competitors, the company risks and exit barriers. The more intense competition in the industry, competitors greater the impact on enterprises, companies should focus more on the competitor analysis. As businesses in the competition to win the determinants of competitive advantage - a relative to competitors and market the final product of market forces and the value added first, and thus the analysis of competitors, by comparing the primary purpose to determine the existence of external opportunities and threats, and in accordance with their own resources to determine the strengths and weaknesses, so as to maximize the enterprise to improve and perfect the "value chain" to maintain a comparative advantage, in particular, is a relative cost advantage. Access to competitors, cost of resources and cost structure of information, the main method can be used are:
1, demolition analysis (Tear-downAnalysis)
Demolition analysis also known as reverse-engineering (reverseengineering), through the evaluation of competing products to the possibility of a clear way to improve their own products. The demolition process is generally related to technical experts invited the participation of a competitor's products divided into parts in order to identify the product function, design, and infer the product production process. The analysis focuses on the demolition to conduct benchmark tests, in which product design their own pilot programs and speculated that rivals a comparative analysis of product design. To sum up, demolition of analysis is essentially an organic combination of decomposition and integration, through the reverse split to understand the product performance, cost and production processes, on this basis, the forward integration of a whole program, and the use of comparative law, so that enterprises clearly their own shortcomings and advantages of the product in the product design and avoid weaknesses, so as to reduce manufacturing costs, the relative cost to achieve competitive advantage.
2, value chain analysis (valuechainanalysis)
Porter value chain concept was first proposed in 1985, and he believes that each enterprise is in the design, production, sales, sending and supporting their products during the process of production of all kinds of activities (operations) of the aggregates, all These activities can be expressed as a value chain. Competitor accounting is to use the competitors value chain analysis, business re-engineering-oriented value chain to provide frames of reference, and strive to further optimize the value chain, namely, the elimination of all "non-value added operations," while to "increase the value of work" to do likely to increase operational efficiency, reduce resource consumption and consumption, thereby reducing costs and gain a competitive edge.
The use of the value chain tools used to estimate the cost of competitor information, Should first identify and describe the value chain competitors to determine the specific value of the value chain activities in composition; Second, determine the value of competitors in various activities of the costs of distribution, and the proportion of the total cost and growth trends; Then, identify the major cost components and those in possession of relatively small proportion of the growth is faster and ultimately could change the cost structure of the value of activities; Finally, through this business and competitor comparison between the value chain, tap out the value of the activities can reduce the cost of information, opportunities and methods. The value chain from the use of tools to understand both the macro-and micro-cost position of competitors, but because of the current information system is not primarily based on activity-based, and therefore in practice the lack of a direct source of information, data collection is more difficult. Enterprises through the above-mentioned various information collection methods, and drawing the appropriate estimates and judgments, and sketched out a competitor overview of the value chain.
