When Giving Your Customers Less Is More SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of When Giving Your Customers Less Is More
Contrary to popular belief, most of the world's household brands are not customer-centric; they're product-centric, which isn't enough anymore. Companies may say they care about the customer; they may even have installed a CRM system - but that's the problem. Customer friendliness is not the same thing as aligning your entire company's development and delivery of products and services with the current and future needs of a select set of customers in order to maximize their long-term financial value to the firm. Turning CRM into a data-gathering exercise run by IT is not the same thing as extracting value-added insight into your focal customers. This article debunks many of the myths surrounding customer centricity, showing how managers need to recontextualize the role of CRM as part of a wider customer-centric strategy. Understanding, first of all, that there is tremendous heterogeneity among your customers, and that, consequently, some customers deserve less, and it is okay to give them less, presents a radically different approach from the way most companies operate. Customer-centric firms do not just acknowledge this truth, they actually celebrate it, because they understand that it offers immense opportunities and maximum profits in the long term.
Swot Analysis of "When Giving Your Customers Less Is More" written by Peter S. Fader includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Centric Crm facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in When Giving Your Customers Less Is More case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Customers and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the When Giving Your Customers Less Is More casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of When Giving Your Customers Less Is More
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in When Giving Your Customers Less Is More case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Centric Crm, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Centric Crm 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in When Giving Your Customers Less Is More case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Centric Crm
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 Centric Crm
Strengths When Giving Your Customers Less Is More | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Centric Crm in When Giving Your Customers Less Is More Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Centric Crm is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Centric Crm 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– When Giving Your Customers Less Is More firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Centric Crm to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Centric Crm to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Centric Crm 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
- Centric Crm 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 Centric Crm is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in When Giving Your Customers Less Is More Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Centric Crm 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Centric Crm 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.
High brand equity
– Centric Crm has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Centric Crm to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Centric Crm
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Centric Crm does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Centric Crm has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Centric Crm in the sector have low bargaining power. When Giving Your Customers Less Is More has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Centric Crm to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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.
Weaknesses When Giving Your Customers Less Is More | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of When Giving Your Customers Less Is More are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Centric Crm 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 - When Giving Your Customers Less Is More should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study When Giving Your Customers Less Is More, 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study When Giving Your Customers Less Is More, it seems that the employees of Centric Crm 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Centric Crm 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. Centric Crm 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Centric Crm is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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 Centric Crm has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Centric Crm 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study When Giving Your Customers Less Is More, in the dynamic environment Centric Crm has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Centric Crm has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Lack of clear differentiation of Centric Crm products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Centric Crm needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Peter S. Fader suggests that, Centric Crm is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Centric Crm 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.
Opportunities When Giving Your Customers Less Is More | 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More are -
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. Centric Crm 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. Centric Crm 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Centric Crm 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Centric Crm 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Centric Crm 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 Centric Crm to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Centric Crm is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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.
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. Centric Crm can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Centric Crm 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, When Giving Your Customers Less Is More, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Centric Crm can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Centric Crm operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
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 Centric Crm in the consumer business. Now Centric Crm can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Buying journey improvements
– Centric Crm can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Centric Crm 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Centric Crm 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Centric Crm has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Centric Crm to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the When Giving Your Customers Less Is More case study. Centric Crm can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats When Giving Your Customers Less Is More External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study When Giving Your Customers Less Is More are -
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 Centric Crm.
Regulatory challenges
– Centric Crm 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Centric Crm 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More .
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 wage structure of Centric Crm
– 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 Centric Crm.
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.
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. Centric Crm 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Centric Crm 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Centric Crm 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Centric Crm 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More, Centric Crm 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 .
Environmental challenges
– Centric Crm 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. Centric Crm can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
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 Centric Crm business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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 When Giving Your Customers Less Is More 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 Centric Crm needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.