Swot Analysis of "Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition" written by John L. Ward, Carrie Meek includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Fel Lehman facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Financial management, Human resource management, Leadership, Organizational culture, Strategic planning, Succession planning and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition casestudy better are - – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Fel Lehman, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Fel Lehman 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 Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Fel Lehman
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 Fel Lehman
Strengths Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Fel Lehman in Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition Harvard Business Review case study are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Fel Lehman to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Fel Lehman to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Fel Lehman 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 Fel Lehman in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Fel Lehman is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition 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 brand equity
– Fel Lehman has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Fel Lehman to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Fel Lehman 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 Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Fel Lehman in the sector have low bargaining power. Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Fel Lehman to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Fel Lehman is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Organizational Resilience of Fel Lehman
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Fel Lehman does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Fel Lehman 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Fel Lehman is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition are -
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 Fel Lehman supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Fel Lehman vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition HBR case study mentions - Fel Lehman 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Fel Lehman 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Fel Lehman, firm in the HBR case study Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Fel Lehman 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Fel Lehman has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Fel Lehman even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Fel Lehman 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 - Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Fel Lehman 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, John L. Ward, Carrie Meek suggests that, Fel Lehman 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition, it seems that the employees of Fel Lehman 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Fel Lehman 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.
Opportunities Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition | 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 Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Fel Lehman can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Fel Lehman 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Fel Lehman 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 Fel Lehman to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Fel Lehman 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.
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 Fel Lehman 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Fel Lehman can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Fel Lehman operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Fel Lehman 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 Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Fel Lehman to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Fel Lehman 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Fel Lehman 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.
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. Fel Lehman can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Fel Lehman is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Fel Lehman 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Fel Lehman to increase its market reach. Fel Lehman 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.
Threats Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition are -
Increasing wage structure of Fel Lehman
– 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 Fel Lehman.
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. Fel Lehman can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Fel Lehman 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Fel Lehman with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Fel Lehman is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
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 Fel Lehman in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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 Fel Lehman business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Fel Lehman has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Strategy & Execution industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Fel Lehman 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Fel Lehman 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Fel Lehman high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
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 Fel Lehman.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition 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 Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition 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 Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition 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 Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition 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 Fel-Pro (B): After the Sale--The Lehman Family Transition 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 Fel Lehman needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.