Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit
In 2015, jane's short & sweet, a United States-based for-profit business, regularly dedicated 25 per cent of its revenue to charities supporting its mission of improving the education and healthcare of marginalized women. The company also engaged in some environmental practices with respect to its use of resources. jane's short & sweet's owner understood that she would have to make some trade-offs between people and profit while still attempting to remain consistent with her company's social purpose and contribute to the resolution of its current problem-finding a way to fill a customer order that exceeded the company's production capacity. While addressing the company's new labour needs, the owner needed to evaluate how the trade-off between mission and money would affect the company's labour source, hourly wages, pricing strategy, product price, and organizational goals. To do so, the owner had to identify and evaluate the options that would enable her to better fulfill her company's role as a social sustainable enterprise. Kelly Ann Irvin is affiliated with Rollins College. Mary Conway Dato-on is affiliated with Rollins College.
Swot Analysis of "Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit" written by Kelly Ann Irvin, Mary Conway Dato-on includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Jane's Sweet facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing, Pricing, Social enterprise, Sustainability and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit casestudy better are - – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Jane's Sweet, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Jane's Sweet 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 Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Jane's Sweet
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 Jane's Sweet
Strengths Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Jane's Sweet in Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit Harvard Business Review case study are -
Organizational Resilience of Jane's Sweet
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Jane's Sweet does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Jane's Sweet has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Jane's Sweet in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Jane's Sweet digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Jane's Sweet 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.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Jane's Sweet 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 Jane's Sweet in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Jane's Sweet is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Kelly Ann Irvin, Mary Conway Dato-on can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Jane's Sweet has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Jane's Sweet 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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.
High brand equity
– Jane's Sweet has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Jane's Sweet to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Jane's Sweet is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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 Jane's Sweet 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Jane's Sweet is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Weaknesses Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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 Jane's Sweet 's lucrative customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Jane's Sweet, firm in the HBR case study Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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 Jane's Sweet has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Jane's Sweet 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 Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit, it seems that the employees of Jane's Sweet 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Jane's Sweet 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Jane's Sweet is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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 Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Jane's Sweet is planning to shift buying processes online.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit, 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit HBR case study mentions - Jane's Sweet 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit, is just above the industry average. Jane's Sweet 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.
Opportunities Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit | 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 Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Jane's Sweet 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, Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Manufacturing automation
– Jane's Sweet 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Jane's Sweet 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Jane's Sweet can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Jane's Sweet 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Jane's Sweet is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Jane's Sweet 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.
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 Jane's Sweet in the consumer business. Now Jane's Sweet can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Jane's Sweet to increase its market reach. Jane's Sweet 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Jane's Sweet 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 Jane's Sweet can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Jane's Sweet can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
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. Jane's Sweet can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Jane's Sweet with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Jane's Sweet in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Jane's Sweet is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Jane's Sweet 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 Jane's Sweet.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Jane's Sweet 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.
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. Jane's Sweet can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Jane's Sweet has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Jane's Sweet 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, Jane's Sweet 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 Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit .
Increasing wage structure of Jane's Sweet
– 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 Jane's Sweet.
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 Jane's Sweet business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Jane's Sweet 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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 Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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 Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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 Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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 Jane's Short & Sweet: Purpose, People, and Profit 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 Jane's Sweet needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
