The Craddock Cup SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Communication
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of The Craddock Cup
This case has three main purposes: 1. To illustrate the importance of understanding cost behaviors in calculating the contribution of the Corvallis Cup youth soccer tournament to decide whether to continue, drop, or expand the tournament. 2. To provide a vehicle for discussing sunk costs, overhead allocation methods, and the impact of misallocation on the income/loss shown for a segment of an organization. 3. To allow students to perform simple breakeven analysis using relevant costs.
Authors :: Kristy Lilly, Liz Smith, Mark E. Haskins
Swot Analysis of "The Craddock Cup" written by Kristy Lilly, Liz Smith, Mark E. Haskins includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Tournament Cup facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in The Craddock Cup case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Financial analysis and Communication.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the The Craddock Cup casestudy better are - – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, wage bills are increasing, increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in The Craddock Cup case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Tournament Cup, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Tournament Cup 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 The Craddock Cup can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in The Craddock Cup case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Tournament Cup
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Communication field.
4. Making a Communication topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Tournament Cup
Strengths The Craddock Cup | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Tournament Cup in The Craddock Cup Harvard Business Review case study are -
Analytics focus
– Tournament Cup 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 Kristy Lilly, Liz Smith, Mark E. Haskins 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Tournament Cup is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in The Craddock Cup Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Communication industry
– The Craddock Cup firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Tournament Cup to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Communication industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Tournament Cup to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Training and development
– Tournament Cup has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in The Craddock Cup 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.
Ability to lead change in Communication field
– Tournament Cup 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 Tournament Cup in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Tournament Cup has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Tournament Cup is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in The Craddock Cup case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Organizational Resilience of Tournament Cup
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Tournament Cup does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Tournament Cup 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 The Craddock Cup - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Tournament Cup 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 Tournament Cup is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in The Craddock Cup Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Tournament Cup 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 The Craddock Cup HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Communication segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Tournament Cup digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Tournament Cup has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Weaknesses The Craddock Cup | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of The Craddock Cup are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Tournament Cup products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Tournament Cup needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study The Craddock Cup, is just above the industry average. Tournament Cup 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Tournament Cup has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Tournament Cup even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Tournament Cup, firm in the HBR case study The Craddock Cup needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Tournament Cup 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study The Craddock Cup, it seems that the employees of Tournament Cup don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the The Craddock Cup HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Tournament Cup has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study The Craddock Cup 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 Tournament Cup 's lucrative customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Tournament Cup has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Kristy Lilly, Liz Smith, Mark E. Haskins suggests that, Tournament Cup is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study The Craddock Cup 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 The Craddock Cup can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Tournament Cup is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities The Craddock Cup | 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 The Craddock Cup are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Tournament Cup 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Tournament Cup 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.
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 Tournament Cup 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Tournament Cup 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 Communication industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Tournament Cup 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. Tournament Cup 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Tournament Cup can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. The Craddock Cup 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Tournament Cup 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 The Craddock Cup - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Tournament Cup to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Tournament Cup can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Communication 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Tournament Cup in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Communication segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Tournament Cup can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Communication segment.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Tournament Cup has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Tournament Cup to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the The Craddock Cup case study. Tournament Cup can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Communication industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Tournament Cup can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Tournament Cup 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 Tournament Cup to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats The Craddock Cup External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study The Craddock Cup are -
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. Tournament Cup 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.
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 Tournament Cup in the Communication sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Tournament Cup in the Communication industry. The Communication 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Tournament Cup 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.
Environmental challenges
– Tournament Cup needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Tournament Cup can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Communication industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Tournament Cup demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Tournament Cup 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.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Tournament Cup has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Communication industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Tournament Cup needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Communication sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
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 Tournament Cup business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Tournament Cup needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Communication industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Tournament Cup.
Regulatory challenges
– Tournament Cup 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 Communication industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of The Craddock Cup 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 The Craddock Cup 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 The Craddock Cup 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 The Craddock Cup 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 The Craddock Cup 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 Tournament Cup needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
