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1. Executive Summary

The core competence perspective suggests that a large part of the explanation for organizational success can be found in the concept of core competence, namely that firms which pursue a strategy of building on specific competencies may develop unique, inimitable skills which will provide the foundation for competitive advantage.

The goals of this assignment are to: (a) identify core competence of an company breezeplus solicitors, using core competence framework (Hafeez at al., 2002), (b) analyse the capabilities which need to nurture and further develop and (c) chose strategic alliance model to explore future business directions based on the strength of competencies.

Breeseplus provides handling high volume of instructions for lending institutions, FTSE quoted companies, housing associations and estate agents. Conveyancing industry is operating in intense competition and business must need to focus on developing core competencies and then creatively applying them to an ever-changing market, to remain competitive.

A survey of breezeplus Managers was used accomplished these goals. It was based on structured framework used for identifying core competence, consists of three stages;
Stage 1: identification of key capabilities
Stage 2: determination of competence
Stage 3: determination of core competence

The study identified IT & Communication as a core competence alongwith client care and office management. It further found that IT & Communication capability is a collective and unique in its characteristics, as well as strategically flexible, had contributed in the past and will contribute to the success of potential business expansion in future.

2. Company Introduction
breezeplus was created by Breeze and Wyles Solicitors, a regional law firm with 5 office throughout in Hertfordshire and Middlesex with 11 partners and a total of around 150 lawyers and support staff. In 2003, breezeplus was launched to provide innovative solutions for lending institutions, FTSE quoted companies, housing associations and estate agents.

breezeplus now operates from its £1.5 million headquarters in Bishop’s Stortford. It has quadrupled in size in terms of staff numbers and have handled in excess of £10bn worth of conveyancing and remortgage transactions.

2.1 Services
breezeplus handles high volumes of instructions from lender, agents and builders. Repeat bulk re-mortgages and repossession work is centred on our Bishop’s Stortford office. Each of the offices of the firm has a team dedicated to Residential Conveyancing matters.

Equipped with leading edge information technology, breezeplus supply these services through a structured use of dedicated leading edge case management software. Highly trained staff works to pre-set service standards, deliver customers with an efficient, seamless, high quality services. Some of our services offered are;
Volume Conveyancing
Volume Remortgaging
Mortgage Repossessions
Direct to Client Conveyancing
Housing Associations
Further Advances

2.2 Company Structure
The Company remains a private partnership, and business is run on a daily basis by the three Heads (Partners) and Practice Manger. Figure shows functional and reporting structure at breezeplus.

3. Why Core Competence?

Core competence is a capability of a company does especially well relative to its competitors. Capability is the ability to make use of resources to perform some task or activity (Hafeez at al., 2002).

Capabilities are well-organized special skills, technologies, processes, knowledge, expertise, or abilities. They create customer value and are not equally accessible to all competitors. Thus, a unique capability should have three attributes (Barney 1991 and Hamel 1990).
1. Rare in marketplace
2. Less imitable by competitors
3. Difficult to be substituted

Core Competencies must be flexible and have potential for continuous upgrading and development. Sanchez (1996) suggest that firms with superior dynamics efficiencies in reconfiguring and redeploying resources may compete by taking advantages of changing technology and market opportunities.

4. Methods

4.1 Survey Design
This study utilizes a survey research method based on core competence framework (Hafeez et al., 2002) questionnaire. It is preferred for rapid data collection and the ability to identify attributes of the population from a small group of individuals.

The survey constructs of respondent general information and 5 questions about company capabilities and performance (covering letter and Questionnaire is included in Appendix A). Respondents were asked about; department, job title, number of employee in department, length of tenure with the firm. Further, they were asked to identify and mark capabilities with these sub categories.

1. Identify breezeplus 5 main capabilities
2. Uniqueness Assessment of Capabilities
3. Collectiveness Assessment for Capabilities
4. Strategic Flexibility Assessment for Capabilities
5. Identify top two Capabilities

5. Results

The date was gathered from 8 Head of departments and Managers. The length of tenure, serving with the firm, of these managers varies from 3 to 37 years. The minimum employee working under one manager was 3 and maximum was 20. Other question response results are as follows:

5.1 Identify breezeplus 5 main capabilities
9 key capabilities were identified by respondents and are listed in Table 5.1.

Table 5-1 : Key Capabilities Identified
S. No Key Capabilities
1 I.T & Communication
2 Client Care \ Customer Services
3 Office \ General Management
4 Employee Training & Development
5 Business Promotion
6 Pricing
7 Human Resource Management
8 Performance Management
9 Service Development

All respondents identified IT & Telecommunication as one of main capability, followed by client care 87%, office management as 62% and employee training by 50% of responses.

5.2 Uniqueness Assessment of Capabilities
The second was question asked to assign score (1-4) to each of capability identified in term of rareness, inimitability and Non-substitutability. Respondents’ results showed IT, client care and office management on the top, are shown in figure 4-2.

5.3 Collectiveness Assessment for Capabilities
Stage 2 involves assessing collectiveness, management was ask to indicate the degree to which each capability has the attributes of (a) across-function (b) across-products and (c) across-business.

Stage 3 of the questionnaire asked respondents to scale each capability from 1 to 4 in term of resource re-deployment and routines re-organisation to find out strategic flexibility. The response showed IT & Communication and client care highly flexible.

5.5 IT & Communication at the Core
Breezeplus operating in volume conveyancing industry, where speed and efficiency is key to success. This study identified IT & Communication as a core competence alongwith client care and office management. Effective use of IT & Communication capability, which is collective and unique in its characteristics, as well as strategically flexible, had contributed in the past and will contribute to the success of potential business in future.

6. Analyses of Core Competence

Breezeplus is committed to its business strategy by further investment in its core competencies including developments in the I.T system, case management system, document processing solutions and online case tracking systems to retain its industry lead. The integrated systems provide customers with an efficient, seamless, high quality service.

6.1 Network
The firm has a modern wide area network connecting all five offices. All staff have access to e-mail, Internet and connected to distributed case management system. Intranet is in place to provide an internal reference and support forum for staff. In-house training is provided in how use and access the IT resources of the firm to new staff.
Figure 6-1: Network-Intranet

6.2 Case Management System
Figure 6-2: Case Management systemPartner for Windows Case Manager is used in breezeplus. It is a powerful document, data and file management system, based upon a strong relational database and linked to a centralised electronic diary, the system is the single source for all case and document information, client details, diary dates, appointments and task reminders at both client and matter level.

6.3 Document Processing Solution
Figure 6-3: document processing solutionBreeplus use InputAccel, a document processing solution, provides all the necessary tools for quickly and easily transforming paper documents into streamlined digital content for enterprise applications and databases. It reduce operating costs, improve data quality and accelerate business processes.

7. Strategic Alliance Model

HIERARCHY
mergers & acquisitions
joint ownerships
joint ventures
formal cooperative ventures
informal cooperative ventures
MARKET

Strategic Alliance takes the form of an agreement between two firms to develop and supply technology or product. Lorange and Roos (1998) model provides a define classification of strategic alliance on a continuous scale between, one hand, transactions on a free market and on the other, total internalisation (Hierarchy).

ModelAn alternative definition of strategic alliance is based on the degree of interdependence between the parties involved (Contractor and Lorage, 1988).

Low interdependence
Informal cooperative venture
Formal cooperative measure
Joint venture
Joint ownership
Mergers and acquisitions
High interdependence

In case of breezeplus, small privately own business, which have small strategic alliances with technology companies, in-depth and thorough analysis is required to explore future expansion. The questions concerning market potential, key competitors, worst-case scenarios, and competitive advantages of the alliance need to be address.

8. Conclusion

In the last 4 years, breezeplus through careful planned growth has formed specialist departments, each of which has been developed to improve the quality of the services offered to individual and business clients. The business invested more than £2m to its proposition including the purchase of the Volume Business Suite, state-of-art IT infrastructure and professional staff.
IT as core competence for breezeplus is incredibly complex and too broad, and requires too many specialties, for its ever-changing environments. Users, suppliers and customers want instant access to information. The demand for new applications, functionality and new technology is incessant.

To survive competitive environment in the industry, breezeplus has to further identify IT to play its strengths. The advantage achieved by the early adopters of technology begins to be eroded as the later adopters catch up. It must coldly assess what it does best and concentrate on core competencies.

Playing to its core competencies, breezeplus requires an understanding on IT's part of: the needs of the company, the current capabilities of its organization, the desires of its clients and the alternatives available on the market.

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