Case Study Description of Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople
In April 2016, the owner of Moonka Automobile, a two-wheeled vehicle dealership for Honda Motor Company Ltd., was facing some difficult decisions regarding recruitment for Moonka Automobile's new branch in Jamshedpur, India. The owner wanted to improve the process for recruiting salespersons for this second branch. In addition to the constraints of a tight budget, limited managerial time and availability, and the need to complete the recruitment quickly, the owner's challenges included (1) identifying the knowledge, skills, and attitude he needed to look for in potential salespersons; (2) encouraging the appropriate candidates to apply for the job opening; and (3) improving the process to be followed for recruitment. The owner certainly did not want to rush things and end up recruiting unsuitable employees, which could have disastrous consequences for the business. At the same time, he needed to get sales underway in the new branch. How could the owner balance his many responsibilities while finding the right salespersons for Moonka Automobile? Atul Arun Pathak is affiliated with XLRI-Xavier School of Management. Gyanesh Mishra is affiliated with XLRI-Xavier School of Management.
Swot Analysis of "Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople" written by Atul Arun Pathak, Gyanesh Mishra includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Moonka Salespersons facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, International business, Marketing, Talent management and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing,
geopolitical disruptions, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Moonka Salespersons, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Moonka Salespersons 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 Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Moonka Salespersons
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 Moonka Salespersons
Strengths Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Moonka Salespersons in Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Moonka Salespersons to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Moonka Salespersons to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Moonka Salespersons in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Moonka Salespersons is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Moonka Salespersons
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Moonka Salespersons does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Moonka Salespersons is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Moonka Salespersons is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Moonka Salespersons 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 Moonka Salespersons is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Moonka Salespersons 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
– Moonka Salespersons has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Moonka Salespersons 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.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Moonka Salespersons 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 Moonka Salespersons in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Moonka Salespersons 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 Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Moonka Salespersons is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
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 Moonka Salespersons supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Moonka Salespersons vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople, is just above the industry average. Moonka Salespersons 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople, it seems that the employees of Moonka Salespersons 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Moonka Salespersons products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Moonka Salespersons needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Moonka Salespersons 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Moonka Salespersons 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Moonka Salespersons 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Moonka Salespersons 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 - Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Moonka Salespersons 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople 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 Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Moonka Salespersons is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople | 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 Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople are -
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. Moonka Salespersons can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Moonka Salespersons 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Moonka Salespersons can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Moonka Salespersons operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
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. Moonka Salespersons can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Moonka Salespersons has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Moonka Salespersons to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople case study. Moonka Salespersons can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Moonka Salespersons 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, Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Moonka Salespersons 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 Moonka Salespersons 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 Moonka Salespersons to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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 Moonka Salespersons 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.
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. Moonka Salespersons 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. Moonka Salespersons can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Buying journey improvements
– Moonka Salespersons can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Moonka Salespersons to increase its market reach. Moonka Salespersons 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.
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 Moonka Salespersons in the consumer business. Now Moonka Salespersons can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople are -
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. Moonka Salespersons can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Moonka Salespersons business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Moonka Salespersons is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Moonka Salespersons 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.
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.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Moonka Salespersons 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 Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople, Moonka Salespersons 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
– Moonka Salespersons 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
– Moonka Salespersons has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Moonka Salespersons 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.
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 Moonka Salespersons.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Moonka Salespersons 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Moonka Salespersons with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople 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 Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople 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 Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople 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 Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople 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 Moonka Auto: Recruiting Salespeople 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 Moonka Salespersons needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
