NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
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Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision
This case examines NBC's decision to bid on Major League Baseball's contract. The issues relate to the cost of the contract and whether it helps NBC meet both its profit targets and strategic goals. The case includes a pricing model to help the student determine whether to bid or not.
Swot Analysis of "NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision" written by Robert E. Spekman, Todd Whiting includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Nbc League facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision casestudy better are - – there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing energy prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Nbc League, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Nbc League 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 NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Nbc League
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 Nbc League
Strengths NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Nbc League in NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Nbc League 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 NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Nbc League has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision 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.
Learning organization
- Nbc League 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 Nbc League is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Nbc League 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 Nbc League in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Nbc League in the sector have low bargaining power. NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Nbc League to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management
– Nbc League is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Nbc League in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Nbc League has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Nbc League has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Diverse revenue streams
– Nbc League is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Nbc League 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Nbc League is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Nbc League digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Nbc League 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 NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision are -
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Robert E. Spekman, Todd Whiting suggests that, Nbc League 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Nbc League is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Strategy & Execution segment. Nbc League needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Nbc League to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision, in the dynamic environment Nbc League has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Nbc League has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Nbc League has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision 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 Nbc League 's lucrative customers.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Nbc League 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. Nbc League 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Nbc League 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision 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 Nbc League has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision HBR case study mentions - Nbc League 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 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 Nbc League supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Nbc League vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision, 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.
Opportunities NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision | 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 NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Nbc League 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, NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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. Nbc League 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. Nbc League 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Nbc League can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Nbc League 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Nbc League has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Nbc League to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision case study. Nbc League can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Nbc League 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Nbc League 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.
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. Nbc League 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 Nbc League 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Nbc League 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Nbc League 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Nbc League can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Nbc League operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Developing new processes and practices
– Nbc League 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.
Threats NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision are -
Environmental challenges
– Nbc League 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. Nbc League can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Nbc League has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Strategy & Execution industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Nbc League 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.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Nbc League 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Nbc League 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.
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. Nbc League needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Nbc League.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Nbc League with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing wage structure of Nbc League
– 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 Nbc League.
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 Nbc League in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Nbc League is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Nbc League business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Nbc League 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision 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 NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision 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 NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision 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 NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision 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 NBC Sports: The Major League Baseball Television Rights Decision 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 Nbc League needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.