Key Factors for Competitive Success OR Key success factors

KSFs are the rules that make the company competitive and financially successful. KSFs are prerequisites for industry success.

KSF can be identified by Answering following three question-

Memory code

Base of choice of customers, Resource and capability, and Sustainable sales are KSF

1. On what basis do customers choose between the competing brands of sellers? What product attributes are crucial?
2. What resources and competitive capabilities does a seller need to have to be competitively successful? 
3. What does it take for sellers to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage?

The purpose of identifying KSFs is to make judgments about what things are more important to competitive success and what things are less important. An industry’s Key Success Factors (KSFs) influences members’ ability to prosper in the marketplace. It works magical on mind set of employee of the organization which has key success factors.

Key success factors vary from industry to industry and even from time to time within the same industry.

Ideally an industry can have one or two key success factors. Some people may consider more than three or four key success factors at any one time. However it is a rare. It is because among these three or four, one or two usually outrank the others in importance. Managers, therefore, have to resist the temptation to include factors that have only minor importance on their list of key success factors. To compile a list of every factor that matters even a little bit, defeats the purpose of concentrating management attention on the factors truly critical to long-term competitive success.

Example of key success factors-

Following are examples of key success factors —

• Competencies,
• Competitive capabilities,
• Resources,
• Product attributes,
• Financial outcome - Outcomes that spell the difference between profit and loss

Key Success Factors for operating in a competitive market place-

 Important key success factors for operating in competitive markets are:

• Cost structure of the market.
• The price sensitivity of the market.
• Technological structure of the market.
• The existing distribution system of the market.
• Is the market mature?