Time-Based Competition Strategies: ASDA Evaluation Report

This report delves into the realm of time-based competition (TBC) strategies, exploring their significance in contemporary business environments characterized by globalization, evolving customer needs, and technological advancements. The report begins with an overview of TBC, emphasizing its role in achieving competitive advantage through rapid response and efficient supply chain processes. It then examines the evolution of organizations in adapting to TBC, followed by a comprehensive review of relevant literature. A key component of the report involves the application of TBC principles to ASDA, a major UK retailer, assessing its effectiveness against industry standards and considering its future prospects. The analysis covers various aspects, including TBC elements, supply chain management, customer relationships, information sharing, strategic agility, and competitive performance. The report highlights the importance of reducing cycle times, streamlining operations, and leveraging big data to enhance responsiveness and achieve sustainable competitive advantages. The report concludes with an evaluation of ASDA's TBC implementation and provides insights into the challenges and opportunities associated with adopting time-based competition strategies in a dynamic business landscape.

Implementation of time-based competition strategies
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Executive summary
This report concerns with the investigation of time-based competition strategies. It
provides an analysis of the TBC elements and the related literature review of how
organizations have evolved to make their supply chain processes faster. An
application of TBC on ASDA and critical evaluation of ASDA effectiveness
compared to industry standards and its prospects going forward is also provided.

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Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................................................................3
First: Overview of TBC and how organizations have evolved to make their
supply chain processes faster......................................................................................3
Second: TBC review of literature...............................................................................4
Third: Application of TBC on ASDA.........................................................................7
Fourth: Critical evaluation of ASDA effectiveness compared to industry
standards and its prospects going forward................................................................9
Conclusions.................................................................................................................10
References...................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
The constant change of business environment due to globalization resulted in high
competition, changing customer needs and advances in technology. These changes led
to the emergence of time-based competition (TBC) in the 1990s. Contemporary
business organizations are trying to achieve a competitive advantage through TBC.
Only the companies that succeed in time management and quick response to the
customer needs will be able to compete, the matter that requires adopting new
methods of production management (Sapkauskiene & Leitoniene, 2010).
Dempsey, et al. (2014), argue that TBC is a strategy that depends on reducing the
cycle time and involves responding to customer needs for the fast delivery of products
and services with high quality and low cost. Organizations that choose to adopt TBC
should be highly committed to change management to be able to reduce the time
consumed between different levels of production.
TBC requires a quick response with alternative solutions to manage future events.
This involves ensuring operational efficiency and stability, survival and adopting the
required plans in accordance to the changing environment. Environmental turbulence
according to Trzcieliński (2011), as cited in Dahmardeh & Banihashemi (2010)
involve the need of new strategies to deal with the current environmental changes and
shortening the time between the emergence of new technology and its sustainability in
the markets (Sajdak, 2015).
The following section provides an overview of TBC and how organizations have
evolved to make their supply chain processes faster, TBC review of literature,
application of TBC on ASDA and critical evaluation of ASDA effectiveness
compared to industry standards and its prospects going forward.
First: Overview of TBC and how organizations have evolved to make their
supply chain processes faster
1.1 Time-based competition (TBC)
The concept of TBC was first introduced to declare the importance of time in
competitiveness and achieving competitive advantage compared to other traditional
factors. The main goal of organizations that adopt the TBC strategy is to achieve a
sustainable competitive advantage. For the major competitors, time is the major
performance measure, like the time required to deliver a new product, delivery speed

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and response to customer feedback. TBC leads to decreasing the cycle time between
stock and order delivery. Therefore, time is considered a limited resource that should
be carefully managed, also organizations should continuously reduce waste and other
activities that do not add value. There are many strategies that organizations can adapt
to become competitive based on time. TBC implementation involves 7 strategies that
could be adopted; system simplification, system integration, standardization,
introduction of parallel activities, variance control, automatization and diminishing
excess resources.
These strategies manage the problems of time needed for product development,
logistics distribution and manufacturing. The selection of best strategy represents the
major challenge to any organization. The cycle time refers to the period of time
needed starting from the identification of customer needs to the delivery of the
finished product or service. It involves sub-cycles, like manufacturing, supply,
distribution and inventory management (Marcizo, et al., 2016).
1.2 Big data and TBC
The emergence of big data-enabled organizations to adopt TBC strategies. According
to Reeves (2013), The Boston Consulting Group argues that organizations should sell
a product or service that provides the most value with the lowest price in the least
time period. The Japanese manufacturers were among the pioneers who realized the
importance of time for speeding up the business processes by adopting the just-in-
time manufacturing that led them to dominate the markets of many industries,
including automobiles and electronics. TBS enables organizations to share
information spontaneously, where the cycle of information within the supply chain
involving acting and reacting is eliminated. The competitor who depends on faster
information is able to outperform his competitors. The growth of digital business
processes and the Internet of Things accompanied with increasing data processing and
cost reduction enable organizations to process information faster than their rivals that
represent the basis of competitive advantage in the digital era.
Second: TBC review of literature
2.1 The concept TBC
The main idea of TBC is to reduce the time consumed during every stage of the
production cycle. This means to shorten time allocated for planning, product
designing and creation, introducing innovations, supply, marketing and transportation.

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Eliminating the non-value added activities by eliminating the time wasted on doing
them is likely to decrease the overall cycle time (Chen, 2013). This is presented in
quick response to the customer needs that leads to higher sales and bigger market
share. Also, organizations can make big achievement by sensitively reacting to
environmental changes. Some researchers argue that doing things in a harry results in
low quality products and increasing costs of production, while researchers, like
Schmenner (1988) and Lieberman et al (1990), as cited in Sapkauskiene & Leitoniene
(2010), argue that efforts are done to shorten the cycle time result in an increased
productivity and cost reduction. Other authors like, (Alis et al, 2006), as cited in
Sapkauskiene & Leitoniene (2010), argue that TBC might result in a negative effect
on the workers. 83 of the US companies operating in the electronics industry
expressed that their employees are more satisfied with the TBC strategy. Also, they
revealed cost reduction and increased market share. The organizations that adopt TBC
depend on flexible schedules rather than fixed working hours to reduce the time of the
performed operations. Flexibility enables workers to make decisions on their tasks,
become task focused and engage in the learning process. It is important to
organizations to direct the culture towards time management, implementing TBC
strategies and take decisions towards time reduction (Hosseini, et al., 2018; Maryam,
et al., 2017).
2.2 TBC elements
The advantages of TBC emerge from demand conditions. The rapid technology
change results in reduced cycle time and increased profit-earning. The TBC elements
are discussed according to Dempsey, et al. (2014), Mao (2018) and Demartini &
Mella (2011), as follows:
 Responsiveness: It refers to the TBC competitive action and analyses every time
element used and inquires about the right to use it. The organization
responsiveness describes its ability to satisfy the customer needs quicker than the
competitors. Principles, like total quality management and just in time, can be
used to improve competitiveness, where the elapsed time represents the common
performance measure.
 Cost: Establishing a relationship between time and money is important. The
longer the product cycle, the greater is the cost and the slower is the response to
the customer needs. The mission is to speed up the processing time of activities
and information flow.

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 Quality: Time and quality are related because doing things faster should mean
doing it right from the first time. Time compression management refers to
targeting loner time activities to ensure doing right from the first time.
2.3 Supply chain management
Supply chain refers to the process that includes activities related to the flow of
material money and information across stages from raw materials to the delivery of
final products. Supply chain management (SCM) integrates the upper stream activities
and the lower stream activities in a way that improves the supply chain relationships
and enables the organization to reduce its costs and achieve sustainable competitive
advantage. SCM aims to fulfill the customer demand and with the highest quality and
lowest price with timely response (Khastoo, et al., 2017).
2.4 Relationship with customer
The increasing competitiveness resulted in a strong relationship with customers.
Customers are aware of their needs, have the right to choose the best product with the
best price. Bad experiences result in customer switch to other competitors. Customer
relationship management (CRM) is an important input in SCM because customization
according to customer needs is important to the survival of the organization (Khastoo,
et al., 2017).
2.5 The degree of information sharing
Effective information sharing with supply chain direct partners and the entire network
should be effectively used to enable organizations to conduct TBC strategies and
response quickly to the market needs. The shared information should be timely,
reliable, confidential and relevant. The information shared among supply chain
members should be updated (Khastoo, et al., 2017).
2.6 Critical consideration in TBC
Products characterized with short life cycles consider the time-based response in
competition. Despite this, the cycle time might negatively affect the level of
competitive advantage of the organization. The previous 2 decades witnessed progress
in international trade, where the multinational companies developed global supply
chains with longtime response. Supply chains faced operational challenges to TBC
adoption (Dempsey, et al., 2014).

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2.7 Competitive performance (Competitiveness)
Competitive performance should incorporate different performance variables, like
revenues, profit growth, operations efficiency, public image, new ideas development,
employees' satisfaction, performance development and financial strength (Oyedijo,
2012).
At the current time, many business-to-business (B2B) in the world has started to take
the opportunity of digital TBC with their ability to act timely on the real-time data.
For example, the manufactures can test parts on the assembly lines and perform
predictive analytics to predict the defect parts during the production process without
the need for human intervention to discard them. Companies operating in the field can
reduce the time lost due to injuries creating relations between variables and predict
the relationships between variables that could affect the injury rates. Adopting digital
TBC strategies requires managers to think of information differently, by considering it
to be an organization-level asset and adopt the concept of enterprise information
management (EIM) (Reeves, 2013).
2.8 Strategic agility
Agility enables organizations to be flexible in facing environmental changes and
varying customer needs. The organization success in strategic agility is to remain
flexible and develop innovative methods to create value. Agile organizations are able
to adapt to competencies in the changing environment and they are able to
simultaneously reconfiguring their operations to survive (Sajdak, 2015).
Goldman and Nagel (1993), as cited in Bernardes & Hanna (2009), argue that agility
is a combination of current technologies and processes applied to the production
systems. It represents a new manufacturing method of flexibility and responsiveness
to complex changes. Responsiveness refers to the organization ability to rapidly
balance its processes according to the predicted and sudden changes (Somuyiwa,
2011).
Third: Application of TBC on ASDA
3.1 ASDA overview
ASDA is the 2nd largest food retailer in the fast moving consumer goods industry in
the UK. It is part of the Wal-Mart group that operates with 550 stores. ASDA serves
more than 18 million customers per week. ASDA offers its products over online sales
and direct sales at its stores. It offers a variety of products, including apparels, home

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appliances, food, baby products, accessories, beauty and electrical products. It sells its
own manufactured food products. Some of its stores have petrol stations, pharmacies,
café, photo departments and opticians.
3.2 Strategy management
ASDA strategy helps in accomplishing its aims and enhance its performance. It
depends on continuous development by evaluating its current position in the market
and planning its desired future position (ASDA Group Limited, 2013). ASDA is
highly focused on the future by considering the increasing retail competitiveness of
the environment. It gets ready for future changes by building the capabilities of the
human capital and considering the importance of data. It gathers data about
segmentation and applies techniques of data analysis to enable the employees to
behave and engage with the customers in a way that guarantees timely response and
high quality of service delivery. ASDA considers the time to be a source of its
competitive advantage that enables its business to succeed today and tomorrow
(Valuing your Talent, 2016).
3.3 ASDA responsiveness
ASDA is highly responsive to the market changes and customer needs through its
high utilization of information technology (IT) that enables it to manage its business
of today and tomorrow. ASDA is able to obtain real-time data about the market,
customer preferences and demand conditions, the matter that enables it to forecast
possible changes (Xie, 2013).
ASDA utilizes e-commerce to manage its TBC by creating multiple distribution
channels. It depends on the digital feedback loop in order to improve its production
process by using IT and data analytics (The Institute of Cost Accountants of India,
2013).
ASDA declares its promotions to its customers through its online store or on the
social media channels. E-commerce enables ASDA not only to fulfill the customer
needs on time, but it also enables it to get their feedback and take the corrective
actions or respond to their changing needs (ASDA Group Limited, 2013).
3.4 Cost reduction
ASDA consumers are searching for low price products and use multiple channels to
find them out and purchase them. ASDA is able to fulfill the customer needs by
offering prices lower than the average market prices. The expansion strategy of

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ASDA in 2012 enabled it to reduce its costs by acquiring store locations near the
distribution centers (Wood & McCarthy, 2014).
TBC focuses on adding value activities and requires organizations to eliminate non-
adding value activities. This is the same strategy implemented by ASDA when it
made staffing arrangements and changed the working hours of thousands of its staff
workers across 18 stores that were underperforming (The Guardian, 2017).
ASDA built its technology mobile app to fill the gap in the bottom line performance.
It conducted an extensive data collection and analysis to be able to provide low priced
products that increase customer guarantee and loyalty. The price guarantee is impeded
in ASDA app to optimize the customer experience. The customer insights of the
products were sourced from the app and used in building supporting processes and
technology development. Also, the app insights assisted in changing prices and
implementing marketing operations. The results were highly supportive to the app
development that strengthened ASDA TBC and increased ASDA shoppers' loyalty, a
number of repeated customer and shopping frequency the matter that provided ASDA
with real-time data of its customer behaviors.
3.5 ASDA agility strategy
ASDA TBC strategy reveals its process of data exchange with its customers that
enables ASDA to shape its business for agility and responsiveness. The digital
process implementation at ASDA depended on integrated technology, where the role
of the IT department was reduced and the large part of technology budget is managed
by the line managers, while IT takes the consultation role. By this, ASDA eliminated
the non-adding value activities of the IT and reduced their cost by maximizing agility
and gaining quick wins (Sall & Lichtenfeld, 2017).
3.6 ASDA quality management
ASDA ensures that it stocks the leading brands, maintains the delivery of fresh food
and expansion in the UK market. ASDA decision to purchase the International
Procurement and Logistics (IPL) enabled it to enhance its TBC strategy by reducing
the cost of goods, improving quality and timely response to the customers' needs
(ASDA Group Limited, 2013).

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Fourth: Critical evaluation of ASDA effectiveness compared to industry
standards and its prospects going forward
ASDA is among the leading retail companies within the UK FMCG industry. It has
started its business since 1920 by a group of farmers who later managed to open the
first store in the 1960s. Then ASDA business was expanded to include George
clothing and car care. ASDA was acquired by Walmart and its business was further
expanded by introducing private brands, financial services and ASDA living. The
acquisition by Walmart strengthened ASDA position in the UK market by adopting
saving money strategy for a variety of products. It has a very powerful technological
base that enabled it to manage its online sales.
ASDA operates in supermarkets and does not have small retail stores like its major
competitor, TESCO. The opportunity is available to ASDA to make further
expansions within the market. The company dependence on TBC facilitates the
success of its low price strategy that enables it to effectively compete in the FMCG
industry (ASDA Group Limited, 2013).
ASDA financial performance is very important to monitor the overall performance of
the company and realize its ability to save costs, generate profits and take a leading
market position. ASDA adopts a low cost operating model that enabled it to save and
eliminate unnecessary activities that do not add value to the organizational
performance. ASDA sales recorded an increase by 0.5% in 2017, its revenues also
increased to record 22.2 Bn (ASDA Group Limited, 2017). In 2019, ASDA sales
increased by 0.1% to record 15.4%, which means that it outperformed Sainsbury and
comes after TISCO. Both ASDA and Sainsbury plan to the merger (BBC, 2019).
Conclusions
There are many strategies that organizations can adapt to become competitive based
on time. TBS enables organizations to share information spontaneously, where the
cycle of information within the supply chain involving acting and reacting is
eliminated.
The main idea of TBC is to reduce the time consumed during every stage of the
production cycle. Organizations can make big achievement by sensitively reacting to
environmental changes.
The organizations that adopt TBC depend on flexible schedules rather than fixed
working hours to reduce the time of the performed operations. Flexibility enables

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workers to make decisions on their tasks, become task focused and engage in the
learning process.
The advantages of TBC emerge from demand conditions. The rapid technology
change results in reduced cycle time and increased profit-earning. The organization
responsiveness describes its ability to satisfy the customer needs quicker than the
competitors.
Time and quality are related because doing things faster should mean doing it right
from the first time.
Effective information sharing with supply chain direct partners and the entire network
should be effectively used to enable organizations to conduct TBC strategies and
response quickly to the market needs.
ASDA strategy helps in accomplishing its aims and enhance its performance. It
depends on continuous development by evaluating its current position in the market
and planning its desired future position.
ASDA built its technology mobile app to fill the gap in the bottom line performance.
It conducted an extensive data collection and analysis to be able to provide low priced
products that increase customer guarantee and loyalty. ASDA adopts a low cost
operating model that enabled it to save and eliminate unnecessary activities that do
not add value to the organizational performance.

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