Case Study Description of Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged)
At the end of a lease, one partner secured a new lease on a larger space that included the original space. The excluded partner demanded to be able to participate.
Swot Analysis of "Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged)" written by Henry B. Reiling, Maria Camargo includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Lease Meinhard facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Joint ventures, Regulation and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing energy prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, technology disruption,
increasing commodity prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lease Meinhard, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lease Meinhard 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 Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lease Meinhard
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Lease Meinhard
Strengths Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lease Meinhard in Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Lease Meinhard 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.
Learning organization
- Lease Meinhard 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 Lease Meinhard is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Lease Meinhard 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Lease Meinhard in the sector have low bargaining power. Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Lease Meinhard to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Lease Meinhard has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Lease Meinhard to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Lease Meinhard has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management
– Lease Meinhard is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Lease Meinhard 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 Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Lease Meinhard is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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
– Lease Meinhard has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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.
Organizational Resilience of Lease Meinhard
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Lease Meinhard does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Finance & Accounting field
– Lease Meinhard 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 Lease Meinhard in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged), it seems that the employees of Lease Meinhard 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Lease Meinhard 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 - Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged), in the dynamic environment Lease Meinhard has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Lease Meinhard has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Lease Meinhard 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Lease Meinhard, firm in the HBR case study Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Lease Meinhard has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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 Lease Meinhard has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
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 Lease Meinhard supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Lease Meinhard vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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 Lease Meinhard 's lucrative customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Henry B. Reiling, Maria Camargo suggests that, Lease Meinhard 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Lease Meinhard 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.
Opportunities Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) | 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 Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Lease Meinhard 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Lease Meinhard 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 Finance & Accounting segment.
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. Lease Meinhard can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Lease Meinhard 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Finance & Accounting industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Lease Meinhard can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Lease Meinhard 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Lease Meinhard can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Lease Meinhard operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Finance & Accounting sector.
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 Lease Meinhard in the consumer business. Now Lease Meinhard can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Lease Meinhard can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Lease Meinhard can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Lease Meinhard 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 Lease Meinhard to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Manufacturing automation
– Lease Meinhard can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Finance & Accounting 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Lease Meinhard can develop new processes and procedures in Finance & Accounting 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.
Threats Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Lease Meinhard 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 Lease Meinhard in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Lease Meinhard 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 Finance & Accounting 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 Lease Meinhard business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Lease Meinhard in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Lease Meinhard needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Lease Meinhard 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.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Lease Meinhard 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.
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 Lease Meinhard.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lease Meinhard is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Lease Meinhard has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Finance & Accounting industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Lease Meinhard needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Finance & Accounting 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged), Lease Meinhard may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Finance & Accounting .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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 Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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 Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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 Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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 Meinhard vs. Salmon (Abridged) 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 Lease Meinhard needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
