Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets
Describes in detail customer management strategies in business markets, including selection decisions, design and management of customer relationship strategies, monitoring the health of customer relations, and linking the vendors' customer management effort to customer profitability.
Swot Analysis of "Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets" written by Das Narayandas includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Customer Management facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets casestudy better are - – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing energy prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Customer Management, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Customer Management 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Customer Management
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 Customer Management
Strengths Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Customer Management in Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Customer Management in the sector have low bargaining power. Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Customer Management to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Customer Management to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Customer Management to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Customer Management 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 Customer Management is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Customer Management 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Customer Management is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Training and development
– Customer Management has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Customer Management is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Customer Management is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Customer Management is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Customer Management 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 Customer Management in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Customer Management digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Customer Management 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.
Weaknesses Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Customer Management 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Customer Management is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Customer Management 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Customer Management 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, Customer Management 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. Customer Management 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets, is just above the industry average. Customer Management 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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 Customer Management has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Customer Management is planning to shift buying processes online.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets, in the dynamic environment Customer Management has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Customer Management has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Customer Management 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 - Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Lack of clear differentiation of Customer Management products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Customer Management needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Opportunities Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets | 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets are -
Loyalty marketing
– Customer Management 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.
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. Customer Management can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Customer Management 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 Customer Management 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 Customer Management can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Customer Management can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Customer Management operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Customer Management 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Customer Management 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Customer Management to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Customer Management 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Customer Management to increase its market reach. Customer Management 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.
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. Customer Management 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. Customer Management 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.
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 Customer Management 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Customer Management 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, Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Customer Management 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.
Threats Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets are -
Environmental challenges
– Customer Management 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. Customer Management can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
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. Customer Management needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Customer Management has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Customer Management 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.
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 Customer Management business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Customer Management with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Customer Management 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets .
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 Customer Management in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Customer Management 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Customer Management 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 Customer Management 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 Customer Management in the Sales & Marketing industry. The Sales & Marketing industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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 Customer Management Strategy in Business Markets 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 Customer Management needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
