HON used to care much more about competition and evolving competitive advantages. I wonder if today's leadership is paying enough attention to whether the company is losing out to competitors. Thoughts?
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Back in the Sperry days and after the merger with HON, the main focus of our annual meetings was a review of Market Share compared to our competitors. After the Allied Signal takeover it was all about gross margin by product. Over time, this philosophy significantly impacted our competitiveness as lower margin products necessary to sell avionics systems, were underfunded and therefore fell behind competitors offerings.
On the other hand, Sperry/HON was not very good at extracting value for aftermarket services. Allied, was, and is a master in this area. Once we learned how to apply the Engines aftermarket model to Avionics, we were able to offer OEM systems at much more attractive pricing, making us more successful against our competition in our avionics systems pursuits.
Good and bad from both cultures.
From my interactions with customers of my SPS, and reading here, it seems that Honeywell has an attitude that customers want them. That desire of customers that I have dealt with, only lasts about half way through the project. At the end of several recent projects that I've been involved with, they have flat out said that they are going with someone else the next time around.
Honeywell's arrogance is ki-ling us.
Honeywell Aero was always the bottom feeder of customer service surveys. Just sayin...
Honeywell has been losing to the competition for more than 10 years, including during the DC days, at least in Aero. The problems have been:
- Inadequate funds for engineering development
- Arrogance - Honeywell thinks it's the only "desired" game in town
- Poor quality and product failing to perform as promised (MTBUR)
- Poor delivery - continual inability to meet delivery commitments
- High prices for OE, spares, repairs, and RMUs
- Reduction of customer support
- Poor TAT (turnaround time for repairs)
- Inability to meet product development milestones
There are many more reasons, but these are the main ones. We had customers who, years ago, swore they would find someone other than HON. Their leadership hated us.
It's probably getting much easier to beat Honeywell. They no longer dominate technology. Lost too many excellent people. They are greedy. Highest price lowest performance. And lastly, they don't stand behind their name or products. They will charge to you evaluate their problems. Blame you, you used it wrong... operated it out of scope etc. Take thermostats for example. All aircraft products. Most Space products now have viable competitors. How's K-mart doing today?
Pricing should be set by marketing. We all know the 4 p’s. In Honeywell pricing is set by pricing teams who are controlled and drilled by the cfo’s. This is one of the main reasons why Honeywell is loosing marketshare across the board.
At least in engines Honeywell cares about competition.
They will only invest in products where they are 100% sure that no competitors will challenge them.
1990s technology looks good when you are the only proposal on the table
As a competitor, I love to HON in the marketplace. I know we can deliver better products, service, and at a better price. We pay our suppliers net 30, add value, and our products are bug free with a professional delivery team
When I hear Honeywell, I know the arrogance that is the 1st impression the customer has. They will overpromise and deliver late, and pushback on any accommodation requested. Then they will start to lower the price at the 11 hour. We have a strategy to counter that which will not be disclosed, but our counter-strategy is yielding significant wins.
So whatever HON has been doing recently - KEEP DOING IT!
Honeywell has moved on from its legacy business lines and is looking to buy into the next big thing at the moment.
Everything in legacy product development will remain on life support. Overtime on a research project will be punished with public humiliation. Building maintenance requires a local code enforcement letter or better... a news story about the roof that just collapsed or a minor explosion. Customer projects will be milked like a big fat dairy cow and capital projects .. well you get the picture.
How do I know if I am working on a "legacy" product? Simple.
Did the sign say "Honeywell" when you turned into the parking lot?
...legacy.
When in business or sports if you fail to assess your competition you WILL fail. It does actual commitment this is where the contenders fall from the pretenders. Honeywell what are you?
Spot on. Where in the past we were positioning/ benchmarking our products vs competition (next best alternative - David Cote/ Rhonda Germany) this is history. With DA it is just cost price plus method, maximum margin on legacy products. This ship will sink soon. Last year we had to increase pricing with 20%. Decision from DA due to inflation, no excuse. Glad I left this sh*t show.
I’m the division I am in we can barely execute any projects let alone worry about our competitors.