Swot Analysis of "Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version" written by Peter Tufano, Ronald W. Moore includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Collinsville Dixon facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Budgeting, Costs, Financial analysis, Forecasting, Mergers & acquisitions and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version casestudy better are - – there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Collinsville Dixon, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Collinsville Dixon 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 Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Collinsville Dixon
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Collinsville Dixon
Strengths Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Collinsville Dixon in Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Collinsville Dixon is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Collinsville Dixon is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Collinsville Dixon 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Collinsville Dixon in the sector have low bargaining power. Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Collinsville Dixon to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Collinsville Dixon 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 Collinsville Dixon is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Collinsville Dixon in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Collinsville Dixon 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 Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Collinsville Dixon has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Collinsville Dixon to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Strong track record of project management
– Collinsville Dixon is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Collinsville Dixon are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Collinsville Dixon has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Collinsville Dixon 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.
Weaknesses Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version HBR case study mentions - Collinsville Dixon 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, Collinsville Dixon 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version, is just above the industry average. Collinsville Dixon 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Peter Tufano, Ronald W. Moore suggests that, Collinsville Dixon 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Collinsville Dixon 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.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Collinsville Dixon supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Collinsville Dixon vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Collinsville Dixon has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Collinsville Dixon 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. Collinsville Dixon 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Collinsville Dixon is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Finance & Accounting segment. Collinsville Dixon needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Collinsville Dixon to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version 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 Collinsville Dixon has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Collinsville Dixon is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Opportunities Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version | 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 Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Collinsville Dixon 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 Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Collinsville Dixon to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Finance & Accounting industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Collinsville Dixon 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. Collinsville Dixon 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Collinsville Dixon 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 Collinsville Dixon to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Developing new processes and practices
– Collinsville Dixon can develop new processes and procedures in Finance & Accounting industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Collinsville Dixon can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Collinsville Dixon to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Collinsville Dixon can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Collinsville Dixon 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Collinsville Dixon in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Finance & Accounting segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Collinsville Dixon can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Collinsville Dixon 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Collinsville Dixon 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 Finance & Accounting segment.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Finance & Accounting industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Collinsville Dixon can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version are -
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 Collinsville Dixon in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Finance & Accounting field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Collinsville Dixon can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Collinsville Dixon 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.
Environmental challenges
– Collinsville Dixon 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. Collinsville Dixon can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Collinsville Dixon 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Collinsville Dixon in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Collinsville Dixon with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Collinsville Dixon.
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. Collinsville Dixon 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.
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.
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. Collinsville Dixon needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version, Collinsville Dixon may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Finance & Accounting .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Collinsville Dixon has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Finance & Accounting industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Collinsville Dixon needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Finance & Accounting 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version 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 Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version 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 Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version 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 Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version 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 Dixon Corp.: The Collinsville Plant (Abridged), Chinese Version 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 Collinsville Dixon needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
