A firm's resources act as the fundamental determinants of its performance and competitive advantage. In order to achieve competitive advantage, the resources need to be valuable and rare. Important resources for professional services to achieve its competitive advantage are capabilities, competencies, skills, technologies and brand image.
The size of Folks DFK & Co is both its strength and weakness. The size of the firm is big enough for it to compete with other small and medium sized audit firm, but not that big enough for it to compete with Big 4 and several well known firms such as Crowe Horwarth, BDO, Grant Thornton and Baker Tilly. The existence of this firm is not well known to public although it is ranked as The Nation's Top 10 Accounting Firm. The limited public awareness on DFK's brand image causes some disadvantages to the firm. Firstly, the firm might face some disadvantages in the process of staff and talent recruitment. Prospective employees will prefer to work with other
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Big 4 firms have their own in-house software developed to better enhance their audit quality. The use of CAATs are also common in these firms for them to perform their audit works in the most effective and efficient manner. With the presence of CAAT, large volume of data can be tested quickly and accurately. Besides, by testing all source location of data from client's computer, it enhance the audit quality as compared to testing of those printouts documents which its actual sources will be in doubt. Due to limited financial resources, Folks DFK & Co. is unable to compete with these big firms to sustain in competitiveness especially from technological resources perspectives.
In a nutshell, it can be concludes that the firm is lack of competitive advantage for it to grow in this face paced business