Case Study Description of Implementing Marketing Analytics
This note supports cases used in Darden's "Marketing Analytics" course elective. Marketing analytics powered by "big data" holds the promise to shift marketing strategy from an intuitive discipline to a fact-based, decision-making process. Based on interactions with more than 100 executives in conferences, executive education seminars, case study development, and consulting projects, this technical note serves as a road map for improving implementation of marketing analytics.
Swot Analysis of "Implementing Marketing Analytics" written by Paul W. Farris, Rajkumar Venkatesan includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Analytics Marketing facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Implementing Marketing Analytics case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Implementing Marketing Analytics casestudy better are - – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Implementing Marketing Analytics
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Implementing Marketing Analytics case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Analytics Marketing, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Analytics Marketing 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Implementing Marketing Analytics case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Analytics Marketing
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 Analytics Marketing
Strengths Implementing Marketing Analytics | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Analytics Marketing in Implementing Marketing Analytics Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Analytics Marketing is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Implementing Marketing Analytics 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Analytics Marketing 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.
Training and development
– Analytics Marketing has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Implementing Marketing Analytics 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Analytics Marketing has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Analytics Marketing 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
– Analytics Marketing 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 Analytics Marketing in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Analytics Marketing is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Implementing Marketing Analytics are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Analytics Marketing 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Analytics Marketing is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Analytics Marketing 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Analytics Marketing 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 Analytics Marketing is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Implementing Marketing Analytics Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Analytics Marketing
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Analytics Marketing does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Analytics Marketing in the sector have low bargaining power. Implementing Marketing Analytics has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Analytics Marketing to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses Implementing Marketing Analytics | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Implementing Marketing Analytics are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Analytics Marketing 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 to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Analytics Marketing is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Implementing Marketing Analytics can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Analytics Marketing 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 - Implementing Marketing Analytics should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Analytics Marketing 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. Analytics Marketing 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Analytics Marketing 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Implementing Marketing Analytics HBR case study mentions - Analytics Marketing takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Implementing Marketing Analytics 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Analytics Marketing is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Paul W. Farris, Rajkumar Venkatesan suggests that, Analytics Marketing 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Implementing Marketing Analytics, is just above the industry average. Analytics Marketing 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Analytics Marketing 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Implementing Marketing Analytics, it seems that the employees of Analytics Marketing 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.
Opportunities Implementing Marketing Analytics | 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics are -
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 Analytics Marketing 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Analytics Marketing 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Analytics Marketing can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Implementing Marketing Analytics 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Analytics Marketing 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Analytics Marketing to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Analytics Marketing 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Analytics Marketing can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Sales & Marketing segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Loyalty marketing
– Analytics Marketing 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Analytics Marketing 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Analytics Marketing has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Analytics Marketing to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Implementing Marketing Analytics case study. Analytics Marketing 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, Analytics Marketing 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, Implementing Marketing Analytics, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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. Analytics Marketing 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. Analytics Marketing 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Analytics Marketing 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, Analytics Marketing can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Analytics Marketing operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Threats Implementing Marketing Analytics External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Implementing Marketing Analytics are -
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 Analytics Marketing business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Analytics Marketing has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Analytics Marketing 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Analytics Marketing 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics .
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Analytics Marketing 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Analytics Marketing 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 Analytics Marketing 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.
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. Analytics Marketing needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Analytics Marketing 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.
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. Analytics Marketing 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.
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 Analytics Marketing.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Analytics Marketing 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Implementing Marketing Analytics 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics 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 Implementing Marketing Analytics 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 Analytics Marketing needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
