The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy

Michael Porter’s five forces is a competitive analysis model, it helps you to understand at the nature of competition within your industry. Understanding the competitive forces, and their underlying causes, reveals the roots of an industry’s current profitability while providing a framework for anticipating and influencing competition (and profitability) over time.

Industry Rivalry

There are already many tertiary schools that are open in Midsayap area but there are only few who offer with elementary, high school, and tertiary level. The institution that most likely the competitor of NDMC is the SCC (Southern Christian College) which is also an institution runned by a religious group which is the UCCP. And the rest of the HEI’s are just offering few degree courses and most are vocational technology courses.

These rivals of course could not be looked-down upon. Because somehow they still are competitors and they are also doing their own strategies to cope up with the rest of the top competing schools in the area.

NDMC as it is known as a religious school which is operated by the Oblate priests and one of the pioneering schools in the area somehow gain an advantage for the parents of the students then feel secured of spending their sons and daughters education in a value-laden school.

The school also has complete facilities that are necessary for the education of the students. The school is equipped with good facilities that make the classroom more conducive to learning like for an instance in the elementary level. All classrooms in the elementary level are air conditioned including the kindergarten and the ECCE. And from time to time also investing on upgrades of information technology equipments as they are also offering courses on IT and computer related courses.

The Bargaining Power of Customers

This has been one of the major areas to be analyzed because somehow these affect the bargaining power of the school over the parents and vice versa. With regards to the status of NDMC with regards to bargaining power, it is somehow still manageable. As for the parents where after of quality education which are manifested by the accreditation and the upgrading of facilities as well as the gradual push on faculty development.

In elementary level even though there are many schools offering this level there are still good turnout of enrolment. The parents are assured that their children are secured inside the campus as well as they are confident with the dynamic teaching force of the elementary level.

On the secondary level, there is also a good turnout of enrolees. These might be because of the confidence of the parents on the way the students are handled in the secondary level. There is a balance between academic and extra-curricular activities. And these are shown in the different awards they got in the different competition in academics as well as on non-academic activities such as on sports and socio-cultural.

On the tertiary level, there had been also a good turn-out of enrolment. This is due to the new courses offered and good results in courses with board exams. The school is also intensifying its marketing strategy to further foster sustainability. Added also to this one is the offering of the graduate school programs which also highlights the move of the school in bringing quality education to its constituents.

The Bargaining Power of Suppliers

I consider the suppliers in the institution are the faculty. It is the faculty that make the school operate. For a school without teacher is like a concert without the band. The teachers are the unique entity in an academic institution. For it is them that directly interacts with the students. And it is them who brings that what we so called service that we dubbed as quality education.

In NDMC, they valued much their teachers, as the transition is on-going so as to the upgrades of its faculty as well as its instruction is also on-going. That is why they have this faculty development program as to uplift the capacities of the teachers to deliver well the best of quality education NDMC could offer to its clientele. The faculties are unique each one of them. They have their own fields of expertise.

These faculties are very important. It is very difficult and very cumbersome to change faculties from time to time. That is why it is very costly for an institution to change teacher from time to time. And also it is not a good image for an academic institution if there is that constant transition of teachers.

The Threat of New Entrants

Although there are already many tertiary schools in Midsayap area. Still NDMC holds its status as leading academic institution in the area. The elementary level still leads in terms of academic, socio-cultural, and sports activities. The proofs are the results of the different competition held every year. The other school that is competing with NDMC is the St. Mary’s Academy. Another Catholic school which is managed by the RVM sisters. The rest are public schools. In terms of enrolment, public schools of course gain much enrolment compared to private schools. The obvious reason, it is much cheaper in the government owned schools.

The secondary level, are also performing well compared with other competing schools in the area. The same with the elementary level. They also perform well in terms of academic and extra-curricular activities. They are also performing well in the NAT exam. That is why they are still one of the leading secondary schools in the area. The competitor in terms with services offered is St. Mary’s Academy. And in terms of enrolment still the public schools are the biggest threats.

The tertiary level is also performing well especially in the courses with board exams. The College of Nursing, College of Education, College of Business and Accountancy. The rest of the courses are also performing well.

The biggest threats are the entry and proliferation, growing like mushroom vocational and technical schools which offered short term courses. To which parents thinks are the easiest way to make their children got this small piece of paper which we called diploma. They are being misled by the notion and being advertised by TESDA that in less than time they are able to work. Of course this affects the enrolment of the school. Because instead of getting bachelors degrees which are offered by HEI’s the parents would really tend to go into these short term courses and graduate early and find a job. They just don’t know that, what are offered in those courses are blue collar jobs. There is only a slight chance of having a promotion and landing on a good paying job.  As we can see, In terms of expenses, by sending their students to vocational and technical school they will have lesser expenses because of the lesser number of years that they will be sending their students to school. Practicality is the term. Parents tend to be practical they tend to send their students in a less expensive and short termed courses. They wanted that their students will immediately finish the course and work. They thought of any student who graduated in four-year course or two-year course will just have the same job opportunity which of course is not the real world scenario in terms of employment.

Threats of Substitute Products and Services

The substitute product and services that the academe presents are the vocational and technical schools that are considered as the competitors. And as presented in the threats of new entrants, the parents and the students also opt to get and enrol a course where they can graduate in just short period of time and can get jobs afterwards. Aside from that, what jobs abroad they can do also pose an additional threat. The marketability of the skilled workers abroad also contributed to this threat. That would then be the reason to transfer to a vocation course that made them transfer to another school. Even NDMC offer also vocational and technical courses, and because there are no big requirement and regulations in creating and building vocational and technical courses. The opening of this kind of school is not regulated. So it’s easy to open new schools of this kind.

And another thing, the move of the government in changing the educational system of the Philippines would also have great effect. The implementation of the K-12 educational system would also lead in developing substitute services to the academe.