Nowadays organizations determine the type 0f activities that should implemented within their business, through developing strategies that have activities that have more competitive advantage against those of their competitors, in order to earn as much revenue to the company as possible. Heathway Inc. It is a company that was founded in the year 1981 and was formerly referred to as American Health way Company.
It delivers its services to the customers through a phone, mail, internet and face to face interactions. The objectives’ of the company have been: To. Provide health and care solutions that would maintain and improve peoples’ lives and also reduce the cost incurred when patients are receiving treatment. Arrange programs that are meant to train people on issues such as: education, physical fitness, and health coaching, behavioural change, and medications and physicians plans on how to care for the sick.
Health way Inc. companys competitive advantage has been that of delivering health care support services through using methods such as: scalable state –of art call centers, medical information content, behavioural change processing techniques, strategic relationship, health provider networks and proprietary technologies.
The following resources are provided by the company to hospitals in order to enable them develop and operate an integrated system mean to serve patients accordingly; use of programs that are intended to help physicians identify patients diseases’ and methods that would be followed to monitor their treatments, information network services that would be connected to the hospitals and company in order to provide necessary services to its clients, and programs that would be used to monitor company’s performance against in terms of how its employees treat their patients.
Factors that have affected company competitive advantage strategies. Where a firm does not exploit the resources that are within their reach, then it’s considered to be competitively disadvantaged. These firms earn low-income for their organization. In case their competitors learn how to exploit the resources, they compete seriously with their company through direct duplication or substitution at no cost disadvantage (Barney, J. B. 1997). The executive of the Health way Inc.
company have been stating their interest of ensuring that the company would be in a position to compete effectively in the world market. They had also been requesting for access of confidential information about the company so as to improve on its performance for example its business plans, financial data, marketing programs, client information contracts and other trade secrets. The disclosure of this vital information would be competitive disadvantage to the company as some its executive could reveal company’s secret information to the public and this would jeopardize its operations.
The state and federal governments have been subjecting the Hospital and Managed Care Industries to various regulations, that have adversely affected the performance of the company, thus limited it to effectively deliver its services to its customers. Barneys VRIO framework consists of four indicators that show whether a company has potential of resources or capability to have the necessary competitive advantages over its competitors . The indicators include: value, rareness, inimitability and firms’ organizational structure to exploit a resource.
A firm’s resources and capability can be considered to be valuable, if a firm can exploit it environmental opportunities neutralize environmental threats and be in a position to avoid risks that are associated with reduced revenue. A resource is said to be rare if the number of firms that posses the valuable resource are less than those of other firms in the perfect competitive market. Imititability of a resource refers to the situations where a firm cannot duplicate or substitute it resources with those of its other competing firms (Barney, J. B. 1997).
APS Healthcare Company was founded in the year 1992 and has its headquarters in Silver Spring Marlyland. It provides specialty health care services to its customers such as offering customized integrated solutions of two product lines such as: care management and behavioral health services. It’s the only company that has extensive experience in health management employee assistance programs; informatics and quality review or oversight programs. It also develops products and services that enable its customers to meet current healthcare challenges such as rising healthcare costs and quality for its customers.
APS Healthcare Company and Heathway Inc. companys have been providing healthcare services to its customers at affordable rates. It is important for the management of both companies to fully the resources within the organization, as failure to do so would lead to low revenue and could possibly be out performed by their competitors.
References.
Form 10-Q for HEALTHWAYS, INC (-2008) http://72. 14. 205. 104/search? q=cache:LwrR7NV8-VgJ:biz. yahoo. com/e/080408/hway10-q.html+Healthways,+Inc+resources+and+capabilities+that+serve+as+its+competitive+advantage&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=ke&client=firefox-a Website accessed on September 18 2008 Barney, J. B. (1997). Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage. Don Mills, ON: Addison- Wesley Publishing Company. Health ways, Inc. Form 8-K Change of Control Agreement http://72. 14. 205. 104/search? q=cache:de0cFDlA_BgJ:www. secinfo. com/dwFSg. v2d. d. htm+Healthways,+Inc+competitive+disadvantage&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=ke&client=firefox-a Website accessed on September 18 2008 APS Healthcare Inc (2007)