Case Study Description of Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy
Charts the strategic shifts in the go-to-market strategy of Oracle Corp., with thousands of go-to-market partners of varying sizes and business models--many of which were also its fiercest competitors. In the past, Oracle's own salesforce had played a dominant role in its go-to-market strategy; however, the new millennium brought changing market dynamics and, thus, partnerships were becoming increasingly important to Oracle's success. Oracle was forced to consider how to reinvent its partnership strategy.
Authors :: Carlos Cordon, Ralf W. Seifert, Donna Everatt
Swot Analysis of "Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy" written by Carlos Cordon, Ralf W. Seifert, Donna Everatt includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Oracle's Oracle facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Strategic planning, Technology and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy casestudy better are - – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Oracle's Oracle, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Oracle's Oracle 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 Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Oracle's Oracle
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 Oracle's Oracle
Strengths Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Oracle's Oracle in Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy Harvard Business Review case study are -
Analytics focus
– Oracle's Oracle 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 Carlos Cordon, Ralf W. Seifert, Donna Everatt 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Oracle's Oracle 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 Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Oracle's Oracle is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Oracle's Oracle 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 Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy 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
– Oracle's Oracle is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Oracle's Oracle 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Oracle's Oracle is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Oracle's Oracle 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Oracle's Oracle in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management
– Oracle's Oracle is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Oracle's Oracle digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Oracle's Oracle 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.
Weaknesses Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy are -
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy, 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 Oracle's Oracle 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 - Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy 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 Oracle's Oracle 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy 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 Oracle's Oracle has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy HBR case study mentions - Oracle's Oracle 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy, it seems that the employees of Oracle's Oracle 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Oracle's Oracle is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Strategy & Execution segment. Oracle's Oracle needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Oracle's Oracle to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Oracle's Oracle 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Carlos Cordon, Ralf W. Seifert, Donna Everatt suggests that, Oracle's Oracle 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Oracle's Oracle products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Oracle's Oracle needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Oracle's Oracle 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.
Opportunities Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy | 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 Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy are -
Buying journey improvements
– Oracle's Oracle can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Oracle's Oracle 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Oracle's Oracle 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Oracle's Oracle can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Oracle's Oracle 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Oracle's Oracle to increase its market reach. Oracle's Oracle 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Oracle's Oracle 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, Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Oracle's Oracle in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Strategy & Execution segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Oracle's Oracle 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Oracle's Oracle 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.
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. Oracle's Oracle 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. Oracle's Oracle 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Oracle's Oracle can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Oracle's Oracle operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Oracle's Oracle 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 Oracle's Oracle to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy are -
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. Oracle's Oracle will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Oracle's Oracle.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Oracle's Oracle in the Strategy & Execution industry. The Strategy & Execution 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.
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 Oracle's Oracle business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Oracle's Oracle
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Oracle's Oracle.
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.
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. Oracle's Oracle can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Oracle's Oracle has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Strategy & Execution industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Oracle's Oracle needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Strategy & Execution 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.
Environmental challenges
– Oracle's Oracle 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. Oracle's Oracle can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Oracle's Oracle with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Oracle's Oracle 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Oracle's Oracle is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy 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 Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy 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 Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy 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 Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy 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 Building Partnerships: Reinventing Oracle's Go-to-Market Strategy 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 Oracle's Oracle needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
