Goats: The Green Alternative (C) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Goats: The Green Alternative (C)
The operator of a dairy farm in Tennessee has begun renting goats for landscaping (see Goats: The Green Alternative (A)). The business proved successful so he considered expanding the operation (see Goats: The Green Alternative (B)). Now, he consults with a statistician to learn how to incorporate uncertainty into the decision about expanding. The case incorporates three types of uncertainty into a spreadsheet analysis of the expansion decision and then uses Monte Carlo analysis to produce an array of outcomes from the capital budgeting process. Authors are affiliated with Rollins College.
Swot Analysis of "Goats: The Green Alternative (C)" written by David Currie, Kyle S. Meyer includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Goats Green facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Goats: The Green Alternative (C) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Forecasting, Risk management and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Goats: The Green Alternative (C) casestudy better are - – wage bills are increasing, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Goats: The Green Alternative (C)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Goats: The Green Alternative (C) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Goats Green, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Goats Green operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Goats: The Green Alternative (C) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Goats: The Green Alternative (C) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Goats Green
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Goats Green
Strengths Goats: The Green Alternative (C) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Goats Green in Goats: The Green Alternative (C) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Goats Green is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Goats Green in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Goats Green
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Goats Green does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Goats Green is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Goats Green is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Goats: The Green Alternative (C) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Goats Green has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Goats Green has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Goats Green has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Goats: The Green Alternative (C) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Goats Green has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Goats: The Green Alternative (C) Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Goats Green in the sector have low bargaining power. Goats: The Green Alternative (C) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Goats Green to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Goats: The Green Alternative (C) Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Analytics focus
– Goats Green is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by David Currie, Kyle S. Meyer can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Goats Green is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Goats: The Green Alternative (C) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Goats Green has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management
– Goats Green is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses Goats: The Green Alternative (C) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Goats: The Green Alternative (C) are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C), is just above the industry average. Goats Green needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Goats Green has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Goats: The Green Alternative (C) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Goats Green is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Goats Green, firm in the HBR case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Goats: The Green Alternative (C) HBR case study mentions - Goats Green takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Goats Green has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Goats Green 's lucrative customers.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Goats Green is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Goats Green has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Goats Green is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Goats Green needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Goats Green to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C), in the dynamic environment Goats Green has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Goats Green has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities Goats: The Green Alternative (C) | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Goats Green in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Manufacturing automation
– Goats Green can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Loyalty marketing
– Goats Green has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Goats Green has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Goats Green to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Goats Green can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Goats: The Green Alternative (C) suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Goats Green can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Goats Green can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Goats Green can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Goats Green can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Goats Green to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Goats Green can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Goats Green has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Goats Green to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Goats: The Green Alternative (C) case study. Goats Green can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Goats Green can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Goats Green to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Goats Green to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Goats: The Green Alternative (C) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Goats Green high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Goats Green needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C), Goats Green may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Goats Green will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Increasing wage structure of Goats Green
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Goats Green.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Goats Green is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Goats Green in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Goats Green business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Goats Green in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Goats Green can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Regulatory challenges
– Goats Green needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Goats Green can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Goats: The Green Alternative (C) Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Goats: The Green Alternative (C) is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Goats: The Green Alternative (C) is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Goats Green needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
