The Mulliez Family Venture SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of The Mulliez Family Venture
The Mulliez family owns one of the largest retail empires in the world. From its origins in northern France, its members have launched more than 20 different retail enterprises including Auchan (supermarkets), Boulanger (electronic devices), Decathlon (sports stores), Phildar (hosiery and yarn) and many other well-known brands. With more than 700 family members currently, they have nurtured a unique business model whereby new generations receive an in-house education and incentives are provided through innovative ownership design. The case identifies the contributions of the Mulliez family that underpin the conglomerateA?s successful business strategy. It also analyses the challenges facing the family and its use of special governance structures to mitigate them.
Authors :: Morten Bennedsen, Yann Cornil, Robert Crawford
Swot Analysis of "The Mulliez Family Venture" written by Morten Bennedsen, Yann Cornil, Robert Crawford includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Mulliez Family facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in The Mulliez Family Venture case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing, Succession planning and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the The Mulliez Family Venture casestudy better are - – geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of The Mulliez Family Venture
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in The Mulliez Family Venture case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mulliez Family, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mulliez Family 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 The Mulliez Family Venture can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in The Mulliez Family Venture case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mulliez Family
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 Mulliez Family
Strengths The Mulliez Family Venture | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mulliez Family in The Mulliez Family Venture Harvard Business Review case study are -
Training and development
– Mulliez Family has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in The Mulliez Family Venture Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– The Mulliez Family Venture firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Mulliez Family to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Mulliez Family to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Mulliez Family 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 Morten Bennedsen, Yann Cornil, Robert Crawford 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Mulliez Family in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Mulliez Family digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Mulliez Family 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Mulliez Family in the sector have low bargaining power. The Mulliez Family Venture has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Mulliez Family to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the The Mulliez Family Venture 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.
Organizational Resilience of Mulliez Family
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Mulliez Family does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Mulliez Family 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 Mulliez Family is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in The Mulliez Family Venture Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Mulliez Family 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 The Mulliez Family Venture - 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
– Mulliez Family 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
– Mulliez Family 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 The Mulliez Family Venture HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses The Mulliez Family Venture | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of The Mulliez Family Venture are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Mulliez Family is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Strategy & Execution segment. Mulliez Family needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Mulliez Family to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Mulliez Family 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study The Mulliez Family Venture, is just above the industry average. Mulliez Family 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study The Mulliez Family Venture, in the dynamic environment Mulliez Family has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Mulliez Family has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the The Mulliez Family Venture 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 Mulliez Family has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Mulliez Family 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Mulliez Family products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Mulliez Family needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Mulliez Family 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study The Mulliez Family Venture 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 Mulliez Family 's lucrative customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Mulliez Family, firm in the HBR case study The Mulliez Family Venture needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As The Mulliez Family Venture HBR case study mentions - Mulliez Family 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.
Opportunities The Mulliez Family Venture | 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 The Mulliez Family Venture are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Mulliez Family 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, The Mulliez Family Venture, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Mulliez Family 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 Mulliez Family to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Mulliez Family 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.
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. Mulliez Family can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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. Mulliez Family 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. Mulliez Family 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Mulliez Family 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 Mulliez Family 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 Strategy & Execution industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Mulliez Family can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Mulliez Family 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Mulliez Family 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Mulliez Family can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Strategy & Execution segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Mulliez Family 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 The Mulliez Family Venture - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Mulliez Family to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Mulliez Family can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Mulliez Family operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Threats The Mulliez Family Venture External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study The Mulliez Family Venture are -
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 Mulliez Family business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Mulliez Family
– 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 Mulliez Family.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Mulliez Family 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.
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.
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. Mulliez Family 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Mulliez Family 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Mulliez Family 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.
Environmental challenges
– Mulliez Family 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. Mulliez Family can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Mulliez Family has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Strategy & Execution industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Mulliez Family 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Mulliez Family with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study The Mulliez Family Venture, Mulliez Family 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 Mulliez Family is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Mulliez Family.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of The Mulliez Family Venture 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 The Mulliez Family Venture 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 The Mulliez Family Venture 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 The Mulliez Family Venture 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 The Mulliez Family Venture 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 Mulliez Family needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.