How a Dose of Data Reality Can Enhance Your Region’s Competitive Positioning (cont.)

A true reality test comes from the investor perspective and is concrete, pragmatic and actionable. Businesses don’t have the luxury of a second chance when they commit to a major site-location decision. Corporate decision-makers are confronted with a wide spectrum of issues and criteria that they must weigh when screening hundreds of possible candidate locations. These criteria include qualitative indicators, such as workforce availability and quality, access to markets, availability of sites or buildings and dozens of other factors. Criteria are evaluated according to their respective costs, after which decisions are made as to which trade-offs between the criteria and requirements are most acceptable. This is most often done by scoring weighted criteria against major costs categories.

To be a successful site candidate, regions must understand the nuances of these business screening processes, and how the assets of the region mesh with business needs. By employing a disciplined, sequenced approach of competitive analysis – using competitive mapping and benchmarking against peers to drive investment and marketing decisions – regions can better understand themselves and their opportunities.

IBM’s five-step, data-driven methodology has helped several areas improve their attractiveness to employers in a variety of industries.We work with a region to build a deep and flexible database tool, drawing from licensed and public sources of information, just as a corporation or its consultants would in their screening process.We look at labor figures, demographics, workforce skills, real estate – data that are real drivers.We then assign weights to the data, and rigorously apply them against the criteria that the region sets. This is a reality test.

The five-step approach

The process begins with understanding the market – analyzing investment trends and matching them with current efforts in specific industrial clusters and location assets. The region will identify the types of industries it wants to target, then understand what drives those industries and their criteria for location.

Next is analyzing competitive positioning. After developing a current product profile of its strengths and capabilities, the region will identify the competing locations it wants to benchmark. Data-gathering follows, with analysis resulting in a list of key strengths and those areas needing improvement. By comparing these data with the initial market analysis, the region will define the most promising industry sectors for its eventual outreach.

The third step is identifying how to improve the region’s positioning. Does it need new highway ramps, digital communications infrastructures, or specific skill sets from the community colleges? Gap and sensitivity analyses lead to critical questions of how the region can best invest in itself to improve. Typically, discussions become more intense at this step as planners and leaders wrestle with defining the right equation of cost, quality and value.

Only after the analyses of industry markets, competitive positioning and product improvement are complete does the region explore how to sell its product. Data drive this phase as well. The region aligns marketing initiatives, channels and tools with the findings and opportunities identified in the previous steps, targeting industry sectors and specific companies for both retention and expansion.

If good things already are going on in the region, developers plan marketing improvements to appeal more directly to the needs of the targeted businesses. If negative impressions exist (such as a high crime rate, for example), developers focus on the need to change perceptions based on data. Statistics generalized to a broad area may not be germane to smaller zones and can be misleading, so marketing must provide more context. Facts counter perceptions, and drive solid marketing and communications planning.

Finally, the region implements its plan. There is no single approach to this step – much depends on the region’s size, commitment and resources.

Two recent examples of areas that are determined to reinvent their economies are worth noting – the relatively compact metro region of Toledo and northwest Ohio, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the seventeenth largest economy in the world.

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