Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky
Gauri Nanda, the inventor of Clocky, the alarm clock that rolls off the bed stand and forces its owner to find it, has to make critical decisions regarding the future of her nascent company. As sales of Clocky show signs of declining, she must decide whether to continue her focus on the alarm clock category or to branch out into new categories. If the former, the question is which segments to pursue and what features to develop, and, if the latter, the question is whether the concept of "humanizing technology" is something consumers would value in other domains. In addition, Nanda must decide how to continue marketing Clocky and its successors, given the potential for cannibalization. Clocky's success was largely attributable to the media's intense interest and coverage, and it is not clear such attention would carry over to other new product endeavors. Students are presented with a number of new product concepts and the findings from both qualitative and quantitative market research. This allows for a rich discussion of how managers can think creatively about consumer experiences to inform their innovation strategies.
Swot Analysis of "Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky" written by Elie Ofek, Jill Avery includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Clocky Nanda facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Innovation, Market research, Strategy, Technology and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky casestudy better are - – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing energy prices,
wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Clocky Nanda, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Clocky Nanda 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Clocky Nanda
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 Clocky Nanda
Strengths Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Clocky Nanda in Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Clocky Nanda is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Clocky Nanda digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Clocky Nanda has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Clocky Nanda in the sector have low bargaining power. Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Clocky Nanda to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Clocky Nanda 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Clocky Nanda is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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 Clocky Nanda 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Clocky Nanda to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Clocky Nanda to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Clocky Nanda 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.
Training and development
– Clocky Nanda has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Clocky Nanda is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Clocky Nanda 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Clocky Nanda is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Clocky Nanda 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Clocky Nanda 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. Clocky Nanda 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Clocky Nanda 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky, is just above the industry average. Clocky Nanda 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Clocky Nanda, firm in the HBR case study Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Clocky Nanda 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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 Clocky Nanda has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Clocky Nanda 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky, it seems that the employees of Clocky Nanda 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Elie Ofek, Jill Avery suggests that, Clocky Nanda is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Clocky Nanda is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Clocky Nanda needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Clocky Nanda to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Opportunities Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky | 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Clocky Nanda 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, Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Clocky Nanda 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Clocky Nanda 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
– Clocky Nanda 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.
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 Clocky Nanda 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Clocky Nanda 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Clocky Nanda 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Clocky Nanda to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Clocky Nanda can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Clocky Nanda is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Clocky Nanda to increase its market reach. Clocky Nanda 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Clocky Nanda 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 Clocky Nanda 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 Clocky Nanda to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Clocky Nanda has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Clocky Nanda to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky case study. Clocky Nanda can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky are -
Regulatory challenges
– Clocky Nanda 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.
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 Clocky Nanda in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline 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. Clocky Nanda 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Clocky Nanda is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Clocky Nanda 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. Clocky Nanda can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
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.
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. Clocky Nanda needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Clocky Nanda
– 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 Clocky Nanda.
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 Clocky Nanda.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Clocky Nanda 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky .
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. Clocky Nanda can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Clocky Nanda 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.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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 Nanda Home: Preparing for Life After Clocky 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 Clocky Nanda needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.