CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor
CARE is an international, humanitarian, non-governmental organization (NGO) composed of twelve member countries that manage field operations in over seventy countries offices around the world, reaching more than fifty million poor people. In 2005, CARE started a pilot initiative in Central America to access whether its support of revenue-generating ventures provides sustainable and scalable poverty alleviation outcomes as well as an opportunity to generate excess revenues for the organization. This case focuses on CARE's challenges to explicitly incorporate a market-based approach within its portfolio of poverty alleviation solutions.
Swot Analysis of "CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor" written by Ted London includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Alleviation Poverty facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Social responsibility and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor casestudy better are - – increasing energy prices, technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing transportation and logistics costs, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
increasing commodity prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Alleviation Poverty, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Alleviation Poverty 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Alleviation Poverty
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Strategy & Execution field.
4. Making a Strategy & Execution topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Alleviation Poverty
Strengths CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Alleviation Poverty in CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Alleviation Poverty 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Alleviation Poverty 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 Ted London 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Alleviation Poverty 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Alleviation Poverty in the sector have low bargaining power. CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Alleviation Poverty to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Alleviation Poverty 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 Alleviation Poverty is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Alleviation Poverty is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Training and development
– Alleviation Poverty has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Alleviation Poverty to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Alleviation Poverty to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Alleviation Poverty 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 Alleviation Poverty in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management
– Alleviation Poverty is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Alleviation Poverty has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Alleviation Poverty to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor are -
Need for greater diversity
– Alleviation Poverty 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Alleviation Poverty 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Alleviation Poverty has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor, it seems that the employees of Alleviation Poverty 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Alleviation Poverty, firm in the HBR case study CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor, in the dynamic environment Alleviation Poverty has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Alleviation Poverty has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Alleviation Poverty is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Strategy & Execution 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Alleviation Poverty 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 - CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor HBR case study mentions - Alleviation Poverty 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Ted London suggests that, Alleviation Poverty 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.
Opportunities CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor | 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Alleviation Poverty 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 Strategy & Execution segment.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Strategy & Execution industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Alleviation Poverty 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. Alleviation Poverty 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 Alleviation Poverty 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, Alleviation Poverty can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Alleviation Poverty operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Alleviation Poverty has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Alleviation Poverty to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor case study. Alleviation Poverty can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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. Alleviation Poverty can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Alleviation Poverty 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.
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 Alleviation Poverty in the consumer business. Now Alleviation Poverty can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Alleviation Poverty 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Alleviation Poverty 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 Alleviation Poverty to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Developing new processes and practices
– Alleviation Poverty can develop new processes and procedures in Strategy & Execution industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Alleviation Poverty can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Strategy & Execution 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Alleviation Poverty 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Alleviation Poverty to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Alleviation Poverty with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Alleviation Poverty 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor .
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 Alleviation Poverty in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Alleviation Poverty.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Alleviation Poverty 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 Strategy & Execution industry regulations.
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 Alleviation Poverty business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Alleviation Poverty 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. Alleviation Poverty can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor, Alleviation Poverty may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Strategy & Execution .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Strategy & Execution field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Alleviation Poverty can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Alleviation Poverty is facing in Strategy & Execution 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. Alleviation Poverty 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor 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 CARE: Making Markets Work for the Poor 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 Alleviation Poverty needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
