Continental Communications Enterprises (CCE) was a computerized communications company that had been in business for 35 years. The company had remained comfortably profitable by manufacturing and distributing communications systems made entirely from parts supplied by a variety of international vendors. Carolyn, the director of finance, was pleased with the price that she was getting from local and foreign vendors.

No strategic management team had been put into place because the company remained profitable without changing the way they operated, with the exception of updating the systems when necessary. For the same reason, the marketing strategies did not substantially change from year to year. In other words, CCE was “coasting” without the need for strategic planning and, according to the management team, doing a very credible job of that.

The CEO exercised a life of semi-retirement; he was either on vacation or on the golf course most of the time. The management team enjoyed the luxury of overseeing what they thought had been done right for many years and making sure that business continued to be conducted “as usual.” While the management team was coasting, one of their competitors was devoting considerable time and effort to negotiating lower prices from vendors. The competitor’s management made a global announcement that they were going to produce comparable products to the CCE line at a substantial savings to the customers. This competitor also launched an effective and carefully planned public relations campaign that caught most of CCE’s market share in the process.

At that point, it was too late for CCE to make the necessary adjustments fast enough to regain the customer base. A year later, CCE declared bankruptcy.

Your assignment is to describe the two (2) strategies CCE did not utilize that could have helped save the business: competitive intelligence and positioning strategy. Define each strategy, what each includes and involves, and the way each one could have made a difference in CCE’s long-range success.