Competitive Strategies Adopted by Esri Eastern Africa Ltd for Competitive Advantage Within the Information and Technology Industry in Kenya

Abstract

The objective of the study was to establish the competitive strategies adopted by Esri Eastern Africa as an Information and Technology firm in Kenya. The research methodology used for this study was a case study. The data required for this research was collected through the primary and secondary sources. The primary data was collected through an interview guide with open ended questions administered to the six managers of the company. Secondary data was retrieved from the internal records of the six departments of Esri EA, headed by the six managers. The data collected, being qualitative in nature, was analyzed through content analysis. Esri EA has kept in place various competitive strategies namely: shift from product model to solution model, differentiation, innovative solutions, customer support, product development, brand image, use of cost cutting technologies and practices, market niche strategy, relationship management and strategic distribution of products. The study recommends that further research be done to establish the challenges that Esri EA faces in implementing their competitive strategies, that a similar study be to other non-technological based firms for benchmarking purposes and that further research may be done to establish how the company deals with the challenges of strategy implementation. Although the company has put in place various competitive strategies, more requires to be done. The company requires to build the capacity of all the existing staff to use GIS, separate the Training and Support department into separate departments to better services to the clients, understand the business environment in which they operate and perform a better competitor analysis and keep an up to date customer contact information. This study was limited by the research design that the researcher used. This research design was a case study. As such, since only six respondents were interviewed, their observation might not be representative of all the views of the organization.