Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems
Salesforce.com evolves from a fledgling start-up to a leader in the provision of Web-based management systems. Throughout its growth, the management team faced several strategic decisions, which resulted in the development of new products and the entry into new markets.
Swot Analysis of "Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems" written by Antonio Davila, Jeffrey Eisen includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Salesforce.com Evolves facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, IT, Product development, Sales, Strategy and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems casestudy better are - – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is backlash against globalization, increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, wage bills are increasing, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Salesforce.com Evolves, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Salesforce.com Evolves 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Salesforce.com Evolves
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Sales & Marketing field.
4. Making a Sales & Marketing topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Salesforce.com Evolves
Strengths Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Salesforce.com Evolves in Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems Harvard Business Review case study are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Salesforce.com Evolves in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Salesforce.com Evolves 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 Salesforce.com Evolves is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Salesforce.com Evolves 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 Salesforce.com Evolves in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– Salesforce.com Evolves has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Salesforce.com Evolves to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Salesforce.com Evolves is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Salesforce.com Evolves 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Salesforce.com Evolves 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 Antonio Davila, Jeffrey Eisen 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Salesforce.com Evolves is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Salesforce.com Evolves is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Weaknesses Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems are -
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems 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 Salesforce.com Evolves has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Salesforce.com Evolves has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems HBR case study mentions - Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Salesforce.com Evolves, firm in the HBR case study Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Salesforce.com Evolves 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Antonio Davila, Jeffrey Eisen suggests that, Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Salesforce.com Evolves is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Salesforce.com Evolves needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Salesforce.com Evolves to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Salesforce.com Evolves is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems, is just above the industry average. Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Opportunities Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems | 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems are -
Buying journey improvements
– Salesforce.com Evolves can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems 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.
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. Salesforce.com Evolves can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Sales & Marketing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Salesforce.com Evolves can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Salesforce.com Evolves is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Salesforce.com Evolves can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Salesforce.com Evolves 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, Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Salesforce.com Evolves 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 Sales & Marketing segment.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Salesforce.com Evolves 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 Salesforce.com Evolves to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Salesforce.com Evolves to increase its market reach. Salesforce.com Evolves will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Sales & Marketing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Salesforce.com Evolves 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. Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Salesforce.com Evolves 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Salesforce.com Evolves to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems are -
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 Salesforce.com Evolves business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems, Salesforce.com Evolves may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Sales & Marketing .
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. Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Salesforce.com Evolves 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems .
Environmental challenges
– Salesforce.com Evolves 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. Salesforce.com Evolves can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Salesforce.com Evolves 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Salesforce.com Evolves has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Salesforce.com Evolves needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Sales & Marketing 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Salesforce.com Evolves is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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. Salesforce.com Evolves needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Salesforce.com Evolves with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing wage structure of Salesforce.com Evolves
– 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 Salesforce.com Evolves.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems 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 Salesforce.com: The Evolution of Marketing Systems 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 Salesforce.com Evolves needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.