Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor"
Andrea Silbert is founder of the Center for Women & Enterprise, a nonprofit with a mission to empower women to become economically self-sufficient and prosperous through entrepreneurship. She must select a new senior sales executive, decide how to share responsibilities, and decide how to pick the best prospective funding sources.
Swot Analysis of "Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor"" written by Thomas J. Kosnik, Natalie Zakarian includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Women Scrappiness facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Gender, Marketing, Sales and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing energy prices,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor"
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Women Scrappiness, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Women Scrappiness 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Women Scrappiness
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 Women Scrappiness
Strengths Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Women Scrappiness in Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" Harvard Business Review case study are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Women Scrappiness are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Women Scrappiness has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Women Scrappiness to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Women Scrappiness
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Women Scrappiness does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Women Scrappiness has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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.
Learning organization
- Women Scrappiness 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 Women Scrappiness is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Women Scrappiness 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Women Scrappiness digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Women Scrappiness 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Women Scrappiness has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Women Scrappiness 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 recruit top talent
– Women Scrappiness is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Women Scrappiness in the sector have low bargaining power. Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Women Scrappiness to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Women Scrappiness 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 Thomas J. Kosnik, Natalie Zakarian 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.
Weaknesses Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Women Scrappiness 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. Women Scrappiness 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Women Scrappiness 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 - Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Women Scrappiness is planning to shift buying processes online.
Need for greater diversity
– Women Scrappiness 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor", is just above the industry average. Women Scrappiness 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Women Scrappiness is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Women Scrappiness needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Women Scrappiness to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Women Scrappiness 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Women Scrappiness, firm in the HBR case study Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor", in the dynamic environment Women Scrappiness has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Women Scrappiness has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Women Scrappiness 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor", 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.
Opportunities Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" | 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Women Scrappiness 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.
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. Women Scrappiness can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Women Scrappiness is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Women Scrappiness 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 Women Scrappiness to increase its market reach. Women Scrappiness 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. Women Scrappiness 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. Women Scrappiness 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.
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. Women Scrappiness can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Manufacturing automation
– Women Scrappiness 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Women Scrappiness can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Women Scrappiness 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Women Scrappiness 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Women Scrappiness to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Women Scrappiness 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Women Scrappiness 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 Women Scrappiness to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" are -
Regulatory challenges
– Women Scrappiness needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Sales & Marketing industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Women Scrappiness 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" .
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Women Scrappiness 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.
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.
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.
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. Women Scrappiness 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
– Women Scrappiness 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.
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 Women Scrappiness.
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 Women Scrappiness in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Women Scrappiness 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Women Scrappiness 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Women Scrappiness is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Women Scrappiness with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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 Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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 Women Scrappiness needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
Feel free to connect with us if you need business research.
You can download Excel Template of Case Study Solution & Analysis of Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor"