Documents two problems in the product development process of Northern Telecom's new Greenwich key systems product line. These problems are due to the conflicting goals of the marketing, design, and manufacturing groups in the product development team. A rewritten version of an earlier case.
Swot Analysis of "Northern Telecom (B)" written by Robert J. Dolan, Sylvie Ryckebusch includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Northern Greenwich facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Northern Telecom (B) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Product development and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Northern Telecom (B) casestudy better are - – there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Northern Telecom (B)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Northern Telecom (B) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Northern Greenwich, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Northern Greenwich 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 Northern Telecom (B) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Northern Telecom (B) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Northern Greenwich
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 Northern Greenwich
Strengths Northern Telecom (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Northern Greenwich in Northern Telecom (B) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Northern Greenwich is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Northern Telecom (B) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Training and development
– Northern Greenwich has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Northern Telecom (B) 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.
Analytics focus
– Northern Greenwich 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 Robert J. Dolan, Sylvie Ryckebusch 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Northern Telecom (B) firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Northern Greenwich to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Northern Greenwich to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Northern Greenwich 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 Northern Greenwich in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Northern Greenwich 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 Northern Telecom (B) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Northern Greenwich 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 Northern Greenwich is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Northern Telecom (B) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Northern Greenwich is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Northern Greenwich 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
– Northern Greenwich is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Northern Telecom (B) 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Northern Greenwich in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Northern Greenwich 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 Northern Telecom (B) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses Northern Telecom (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Northern Telecom (B) are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Northern Greenwich needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Northern Greenwich 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. Northern Greenwich 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Northern Greenwich is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Northern Telecom (B) 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 Northern Greenwich 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Northern Greenwich 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Northern Telecom (B), it seems that the employees of Northern Greenwich 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Northern Greenwich 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Robert J. Dolan, Sylvie Ryckebusch suggests that, Northern Greenwich 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Northern Telecom (B) 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 Northern Greenwich has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Northern Greenwich, firm in the HBR case study Northern Telecom (B) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Northern Telecom (B) 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 Northern Telecom (B) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Northern Greenwich is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities Northern Telecom (B) | 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 Northern Telecom (B) are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Northern Greenwich 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
– Northern Greenwich 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, Northern Greenwich 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, Northern Telecom (B), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Northern Greenwich 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.
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. Northern Greenwich 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. Northern Greenwich 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Northern Greenwich in the consumer business. Now Northern Greenwich can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Northern Greenwich 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Northern Greenwich can develop new processes and procedures in Sales & Marketing 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Northern Greenwich is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Northern Telecom (B) 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Northern Greenwich can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Northern Telecom (B) 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Northern Greenwich in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Sales & Marketing segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Northern Greenwich 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 Northern Telecom (B) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Northern Greenwich to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Northern Greenwich has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Northern Greenwich to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Northern Telecom (B) case study. Northern Greenwich can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Northern Telecom (B) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Northern Telecom (B) 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 Northern Greenwich business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Northern Greenwich 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Northern Telecom (B), Northern Greenwich 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 .
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. Northern Greenwich needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Northern Greenwich with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Northern Greenwich is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Northern Greenwich 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 Northern Telecom (B) .
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 Northern Greenwich.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Northern Greenwich 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Northern Greenwich 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 Sales & Marketing industry regulations.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Sales & Marketing field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Northern Greenwich can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Northern Greenwich in the Sales & Marketing industry. The Sales & Marketing 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Northern Telecom (B) 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 Northern Telecom (B) 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 Northern Telecom (B) 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 Northern Telecom (B) 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 Northern Telecom (B) 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 Northern Greenwich needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
