Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
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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 - – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, 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 -
Strong track record of project management
– Women Scrappiness is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Women Scrappiness to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Women Scrappiness to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Women Scrappiness is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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.
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.
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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Women Scrappiness 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.
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.
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 -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Women Scrappiness has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
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.
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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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 Women Scrappiness 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Women Scrappiness supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor", it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Women Scrappiness vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
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.
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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Women Scrappiness products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Women Scrappiness needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
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.
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.
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.
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 -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Women Scrappiness can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Women Scrappiness operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
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.
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.
Loyalty marketing
– Women Scrappiness 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Buying journey improvements
– Women Scrappiness can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor" 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.
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 Women Scrappiness 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, Women Scrappiness 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, Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor", to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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.
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 -
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.
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.
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. Women Scrappiness 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.
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 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.
Environmental challenges
– Women Scrappiness 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. Women Scrappiness can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Women Scrappiness has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Women Scrappiness 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Women Scrappiness business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
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