Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit?
Bio-Vert is a leading Canadian brand of eco-cleaning products manufactured by Quebec-based Savons Prolav. Run by a brother and sister team, Savons Prolav bases its products on their vision, which includes eco-friendliness, affordability and effectiveness. Demand for Bio-Vert's phosphate-free detergents has increased dramatically since the 2007 blue-green algae bloom outbreaks in Quebec's waterways and subsequent legislation restricting phosphate use in cleaning products. However, now that "green" cleaning products have become more mainstream, Savons Prolav faces the issue of how to adapt and grow in an increasingly crowded marketplace. This discussion considers how Savons Prolav can remain competitive in this difficult industry segment while maintaining its environmental focus. This case highlights the pressures that an SME with strong environmental values faces in a competitive market. It includes a portrait of the cleaning products industry, consumer patterns with regards to eco-friendly products, and a background of the provincial socio-environmental event that triggered increased demand for green cleaning products in Quebec. Savons Prolav's history, business model and core values are discussed along with potential growth options. Details on related industry, societal and marketing perspectives are provided to guide the reader through the advantages and disadvantages inherent to each opportunity.
Authors :: Raymond Paquin, Catherine Bedard, Genevieve Grainger
Swot Analysis of "Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit?" written by Raymond Paquin, Catherine Bedard, Genevieve Grainger includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Savons Prolav facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Strategy and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, technology disruption,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Savons Prolav, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Savons Prolav 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 Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Savons Prolav
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 Savons Prolav
Strengths Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Savons Prolav in Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Organizational Resilience of Savons Prolav
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Savons Prolav does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Savons Prolav 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 Savons Prolav in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Savons Prolav 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 Savons Prolav in the sector have low bargaining power. Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Savons Prolav to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Savons Prolav 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 Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Savons Prolav 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 Raymond Paquin, Catherine Bedard, Genevieve Grainger 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Savons Prolav to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Savons Prolav to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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.
Training and development
– Savons Prolav has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Savons Prolav is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Savons Prolav is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– Savons Prolav is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Weaknesses Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? are -
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit?, 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? HBR case study mentions - Savons Prolav 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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 Savons Prolav 's lucrative customers.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit?, it seems that the employees of Savons Prolav 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Raymond Paquin, Catherine Bedard, Genevieve Grainger suggests that, Savons Prolav 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit?, is just above the industry average. Savons Prolav needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Savons Prolav has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Savons Prolav, firm in the HBR case study Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Savons Prolav is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Strategy & Execution segment. Savons Prolav needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Savons Prolav to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Savons Prolav is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Savons Prolav 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 Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? | 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 Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Savons Prolav can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Savons Prolav is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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.
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. Savons Prolav can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Savons Prolav 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Strategy & Execution industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Savons Prolav can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Savons Prolav 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Savons Prolav has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Savons Prolav to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? case study. Savons Prolav can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Savons Prolav 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Savons Prolav 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Savons Prolav 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.
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 Savons Prolav 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Savons Prolav 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 Savons Prolav to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Savons Prolav can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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.
Threats Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? are -
Increasing wage structure of Savons Prolav
– 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 Savons Prolav.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Savons Prolav 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. Savons Prolav can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
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 Savons Prolav business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit?, Savons Prolav 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 .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Savons Prolav is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Savons Prolav 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.
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. Savons Prolav needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Savons Prolav 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 Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? .
Regulatory challenges
– Savons Prolav 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Savons Prolav has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Strategy & Execution industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Savons Prolav 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Savons Prolav 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Savons Prolav 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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 Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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 Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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 Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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 Bio-Vert: Green to What Limit? 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 Savons Prolav needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
