Case Study Description of Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B)
Nokia's leaders reflect on the Bridge program, lessons learned during its implementation, and the business benefits it brought to the company. Nokia's Bridge program resulted in 60% of employees knowing their next step the day they exited the firm. It also helped employees start 1,000 new companies, and replaced jobs in communities where Nokia was a major employer. One-third of all mobile phone sales between 2011 - 2012 came from new products that were developed at R&D sites and manufactured at factories that were to be closed down or downsized as part of the restructuring.
Swot Analysis of "Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B)" written by Sandra J. Sucher, Susan Winterberg includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Nokia's Bridge facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Human resource management, Managing people, Operations management, Reorganization, Sales and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) casestudy better are - – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Nokia's Bridge, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Nokia's Bridge 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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Nokia's Bridge
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 Nokia's Bridge
Strengths Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Nokia's Bridge in Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Organizational Resilience of Nokia's Bridge
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Nokia's Bridge does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Nokia's Bridge 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 Nokia's Bridge in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) 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 brand equity
– Nokia's Bridge has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Nokia's Bridge to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Nokia's Bridge is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Nokia's Bridge 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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Nokia's Bridge in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Nokia's Bridge in the sector have low bargaining power. Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Nokia's Bridge to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Nokia's Bridge has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Nokia's Bridge 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Nokia's Bridge is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) 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 Nokia's Bridge 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
– Nokia's Bridge is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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.
Weaknesses Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) are -
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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 Nokia's Bridge has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Sandra J. Sucher, Susan Winterberg suggests that, Nokia's Bridge 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B), it seems that the employees of Nokia's Bridge 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 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 Nokia's Bridge supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Nokia's Bridge vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Nokia's Bridge 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Nokia's Bridge products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Nokia's Bridge needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Nokia's Bridge has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Nokia's Bridge is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) HBR case study mentions - Nokia's Bridge 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Nokia's Bridge 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B), it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Sales & Marketing strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Opportunities Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) are -
Loyalty marketing
– Nokia's Bridge 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Nokia's Bridge 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 Nokia's Bridge to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Nokia's Bridge can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Nokia's Bridge 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, Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Nokia's Bridge has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Nokia's Bridge to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) case study. Nokia's Bridge can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Nokia's Bridge to increase its market reach. Nokia's Bridge 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Nokia's Bridge 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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Nokia's Bridge to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Nokia's Bridge 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Nokia's Bridge can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Nokia's Bridge operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
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. Nokia's Bridge 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. Nokia's Bridge 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Nokia's Bridge 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.
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 Nokia's Bridge in the consumer business. Now Nokia's Bridge can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Nokia's Bridge 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.
Threats Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B) are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Nokia's Bridge 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Nokia's Bridge is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (B), Nokia's Bridge 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 dependence on third party suppliers
– Nokia's Bridge 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
– Nokia's Bridge 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. Nokia's Bridge can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Nokia's Bridge with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Nokia's Bridge 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.
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 Nokia's Bridge business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Nokia's Bridge 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.
Increasing wage structure of Nokia's Bridge
– 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 Nokia's Bridge.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Nokia's Bridge 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.
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 Nokia's Bridge in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Nokia's Bridge.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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 Nokia's Bridge Program: Outcome and Results (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 Nokia's Bridge needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.