On how to build the market competitiveness of construction enterprises

Survival and development is a realistic problem faced by every enterprise at all times, and it is also the basic goal of various business management activities of enterprises. Whether it can survive and develop continuously depends on the competitiveness of enterprises to some extent. Therefore, how to build the core competitiveness of enterprises has become an important topic in the field of enterprise management, and it is also a problem that high-level enterprises must pay attention to. As for construction enterprises, whether engaged in international project contracting or focusing on the domestic market; Whether we focus on the housing construction market or take the road of diversified business development such as electricity, roads and bridges, we can't avoid the competitiveness of the construction market. Then, what is the competitiveness of enterprises and how to build the market competitiveness of construction enterprises? On this topic, on the basis of trying to understand Porter's competition theory, combined with the characteristics of production and operation of construction enterprises, some superficial views are discussed. 1, competitive advantage of enterprises According to Michael Porter's competition theory, the choice of competitive strategy of enterprises must consider two core issues: first, the long-term profitability of industries (or industries) (because the profitability of each industry is different, the so-called sunrise industry and sunset industry are also about the sustainable profitability of industries); Second, the competitive position of enterprises in the industry. For the former, Porter put forward the famous "five-force model", that is, the competitiveness of existing competitors, the entry ability of potential competitors, the substitution ability of substitutes and the bargaining power of buyers and sellers. These five kinds of competitiveness jointly determine the different profitability of different industries. For the latter, Porter puts forward three basic strategies that enterprises can create higher than the average industrial profit rate of the same industry: cost priority, differentiation and target concentration. As for the target concentration, it is to seek cost concentration and differential concentration in a narrow market segment. So in essence, according to Porter's theory, enterprises can have two basic competitive advantages in the industry: low cost or differentiation. For construction enterprises, their industries are restricted. Unless we take a diversified route (as we all know, Bouygues, France ranks in the top five in ENR, and its diversified development field has already involved the media field), we should think about how to build our own core competitive advantage in this industry (construction industry). 2. Characteristics of management mode of construction enterprises The important point that distinguishes construction enterprises from traditional industrial enterprises lies in the particularity of their products. First of all, construction products can not be decided only by construction enterprises; Secondly, most building products cannot be standardized, scaled and mass-produced by assembly line, and only a single large-scale product can be produced; Third, the production site of building products is fixed and the open-air working conditions are poor; Fourth, the production cycle of building products is very long, and the production (construction) process is complicated, which is interfered by too many external factors. It is the above characteristics of construction products that determine the operating characteristics of construction enterprises. First of all, construction enterprises have "sales" characteristics different from traditional industrial enterprises. The ownership of "building products" is in the hands of customers (owners) from beginning to end, and it is not necessary for contractors to produce them before selling them. On the contrary, the sales of building products are actually a kind of pre-competition of construction right, so the sales of construction enterprises are actually a kind of recommendation or persuasion of construction ability, accompanied by a pre-contract of construction price. Therefore, there are few so-called sales channels and distribution channels for construction enterprises. Secondly, the "customers" of construction enterprises are mostly "institutions" rather than individuals. Such institutions include enterprises, governments, schools and so on. Moreover, these "institutions" must employ specialized consulting management institutions to judge the "construction capacity" and "price level of reaching a construction contract" of a construction enterprise. The regionality of customers largely determines that it is difficult for construction enterprises to maintain long-term "customers" (not impossible, but difficult compared with ordinary consumer goods). Third, the standardization of construction technology. In other words, it is difficult to innovate or break through the construction technology. The production of building products must be carried out in strict accordance with "national norms" or "industry standards", and every link in the production process must be carried out in strict accordance with standards or norms, which limits the innovation in the construction process. Most of the differences reflected in building products are "quality", not the differences in production links. Fourth, the similarity of the mode of production of building products. Although building products are divided into hotels, houses, factories, public buildings, etc. The construction management process varies with different building functions. However, there is little difference in the basic links of construction, especially during the structural construction. Therefore, it is difficult to reflect the differences in the production links of building products. Fifth, the production technology of building products depends on the characteristics of building materials to a certain extent. Without the revolutionary development of building materials, construction technology will follow the traditional model and it is difficult to make a breakthrough. Sixth, building products must be produced and used in fixed places, which determines the liquidity of marketing and production of building products. 3. How do construction enterprises build competitive advantages? After a brief analysis of the characteristics of construction products and the characteristics of the production and operation mode of construction enterprises, we will cut into the main content of this paper: how to build the competitive advantage of construction enterprises? According to Porter's theory, the basic competitive strategy of enterprises is nothing more than low cost and differentiation. So how do construction enterprises reflect the competitive advantages of these two aspects? Let's talk about the difference first. Porter pointed out that "differentiated management depends on a series of factors such as the foundation of the product itself, sales delivery system and marketing channels." Therefore, the difference is actually more "product". For construction enterprises, the characteristics of building products are not determined by "construction enterprises", but by "customers" or "owners" (even the owners may not be completely in control, but are bound to be limited by designers, specifications, regulations and many other conditions). Moreover, as mentioned above, it is difficult for different construction enterprises to reflect the differences in production links due to the requirements of specifications, the limitations of building materials and the similarity of production methods. Therefore, the "differences" between construction enterprises need to be reflected in the "integration" of enterprises. In other words, construction enterprises extend to the upstream and downstream of the industrial value chain. Extending upstream means developing in the direction of investment and design, and downstream means developing in the direction of building materials production, sales and professional construction. Some familiar professional words, such as BOT, EPC, PDB, etc. Its essence is to make traditional construction enterprises work hard in the direction of construction general contracting, project general contracting (including design) and investment-design-construction-operation integration. The process of integration is to increase the business scope of enterprises in the industrial value chain. However, while integrating and enhancing the right to speak in negotiations, enterprises should also pay attention to the fact that integration often increases the operating costs of enterprises. Therefore, enterprises pursuing integration and differentiation "must always explore differentiated business methods so that the price premium is greater than the extra cost of differentiation". In addition, some successful construction enterprises that pursue differentiation adopt differentiated concentration strategy (or differentiated concentration in concentration strategy), such as the well-known Hochtief company, which has a special "Airport Division" in its organizational structure. In this very concentrated target market field, the company adopts an integrated strategy, that is, providing customers with all-round services from airport design, consultation, management, equipment procurement and construction through professional fields. Personally, the construction of "differentiated" competitiveness or competitive advantage of construction enterprises should be found from the choice of target market and even the combination of service products (or service content, methods and activities), which is mostly related to the strategic level and operation mode of enterprises. In addition, the cost is low. Regarding the "low-cost" strategic advantage of construction enterprises, we need to build it from several aspects: First, we need to change from scale economy to speed economy. Many domestic construction enterprises still regard "scale" as the main index to measure the enterprise's ability, and a large number of contracts can make enterprises make up for the shortage of internal funds through "advance payment" and "project payment". As long as there is a new contract, the cash flow of the enterprise will not be broken, and the enterprise can continue to operate, regardless of its operating performance. Therefore, many construction enterprises (or regional branches) didn't know their real operating conditions until the day of final liquidation. In addition, with scale, it can cover many problems in enterprise management and bring many non-operating performance benefits. Therefore, at present, the competition of many domestic construction enterprises is still in the development state of "scale economy". Chandler vividly described "the economy of speed" in The Visible Hand. The well-known "economies of scale" refers to reducing the unit product cost by increasing output and diluting fixed costs, thus obtaining "additional economy". But Chandler believes that "the improvement of productivity and the reduction of unit cost mainly come from the improvement of throughput in quantity and speed, not from the expansion of factories or equipment in scale." This kind of economy mainly comes from the combination and coordination ability of material flow in the factory, rather than more specialization and further division of labor in the factory. "For construction enterprises engaged in the production of' bulky products', strengthening internal coordination ability and resource combination allocation ability, improving technical management ability, improving production speed and shortening production cycle are important means to reduce project cost and improve enterprise efficiency. Long production cycle, individualization of products and fluidity of production are the main characteristics of building products production, which brings great difficulties to the organization and coordination of production, but also brings great room for improvement through production organization. As far as the construction industry is concerned, it is necessary to shorten the construction period. In order to achieve this goal, we must improve the coordination and organization ability of the production link of the project. Project construction management is a systematic work, which is very complicated from the aspects of design coordination, construction scheme preparation, materials and equipment procurement, labor resources organization, site planning, process arrangement and so on. It is far more complicated than the production of ordinary standardized industrial products. The regularity of production organization also includes the production personality of different products (projects), which needs to be planned and coordinated in advance. If we can't coordinate in an orderly way, there will inevitably be insufficient or excessive supply of materials, and even lead to the simultaneous backlog and shortage of different materials, that is, downtime and process bottlenecks appear at the same time, which greatly increases operating costs. Therefore, the project management team must pay attention to the planning in advance and the coordination in the process, otherwise the production speed will be affected and the cost increase will become inevitable. From the enterprise level, it is to improve the authorization of the project team. In order to improve the "scale effect of procurement", many construction enterprises often adopt the mode of company procurement, and its benefits are self-evident. However, efficiency is often sacrificed, which leads to the phenomenon of "grain and grass shortage" in the project. In addition, in terms of the use of funds, personnel and production organization of the project, it is necessary for the enterprise headquarters to improve the operational efficiency and the corresponding speed of service and support for the project, so as to improve the "speed" in the process of project implementation and embody the "speed economy". Second, we should also pay attention to the research and application of construction technology in reducing costs and improving speed. The coordination of the construction process, in addition to the coordination of the "organizational process", is the coordination and determination of the technical scheme. Especially in the fields of structure, decoration, electromechanical (if it is a building construction project), major technical schemes involving time limit and cost must be carefully discussed and comprehensively determined before being put into practice. This requires us to attach importance to the research of "applied technology", standardize some major "construction schemes" that affect the construction period, quality and cost as much as possible, study the "schemes and measures" that affect the above factors in advance, and give "early warning" in the project implementation. Thirdly, in order to realize "low cost" operation, we must attach importance to "internal control" in project implementation and establish corresponding control mechanism. At present, in domestic enterprises, when we talk about "assessment", it seems that it is the work of human resources departments, and most of them are aimed at people. In fact, according to Drucker, the inspection mechanism is a test of the "control system" of the enterprise. What we need more is not inspection and assessment, but the establishment of a "control system" for specific work and processes, rather than the control of "people". This requires the establishment of multiple "index systems" during the project implementation, such as "human body temperature, pulse and blood pressure". Through the "investigation" of these indicators, we can judge the "symptoms or problems" in the project implementation at the first time, and then carry out analysis and research to find out the causes of the problems, and then put forward "treatment measures". More importantly, we should take "no" as the fourth and pay attention to human factors. The complexity and long cycle of a single product make it difficult to "standardize" the project implementation process. Some processes can be done, but all "activities" cannot be "standardized" and streamlined. In this way, whether low-cost competition can be achieved depends on the key factor in project implementation, that is, the strategic factor-"people". There is no doubt that human resources have an impact on the competitiveness of contemporary enterprises, and for construction enterprises, such as single-piece large-scale product production enterprises, human factors are particularly important. As Drucker said, each production system has different requirements for management skills and management organization. " Fixed batch production system requires managers to receive training in analysis, thinking, scheduling and planning, and single product production requires their managers to have good technical skills. Therefore, compared with other production systems (such as fixed batch systems, process systems, etc.). ), construction enterprises need to pay more attention to the cultivation and development of core employees. Compared with large-scale production in workshop, the production process of engineering projects is influenced by more external factors, and the unique personality of products makes it difficult to successfully replicate the previous product production experience, which requires the project manager to have higher decision-making judgment ability, stronger flexibility, more professional skill combination ability and more persevering psychological quality. But we know how complicated, long-term and arduous it is to train such people. This requires managers at all levels of construction enterprises to treat personnel training and development as an important, long-term and continuous key work in enterprise management, not just a slogan. Drucker clearly pointed out that "in the production of a single product, the primary task of the management authorities is to obtain purchase orders." "This shows the importance of marketing. On the other hand, it shows that the production and operation of construction enterprises will fluctuate with the fluctuation of economy, and the production scale of enterprises will also change with the change of external economic environment, thus having a great impact on personnel demand. For example, in this economic crisis, many construction enterprises have to lay off employees. One of the author's views is that construction enterprises must draw a certain amount of personnel resettlement fund from their profits every year as a measure to "make up for the poor with abundance". In the case of poor business conditions, or a small number of projects and a large number of personnel, the use of this resettlement fund can smoothly tide over the difficult period and stabilize some professionals who are familiar with the business model and understand the operation mechanism of the enterprise. In short, it is difficult for domestic ordinary construction enterprises to gain a competitive advantage in "differentiation" in the short term, but there is much to be done in "low cost". Only by giving full play to people's initiative, with the help of efficient organization and coordination ability, supplemented by practical technical measures, increasing the authorization of front-office managers and highlighting the internal control ability of enterprise headquarters can we make a difference in "low cost"