Case Study Description of Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox
The Bacardi Southampton case series (A - D) follows the transition from a push-based supply chain to an agile, pull-based system. The (B) case demonstrates the paradox in operational thinking and delineates the unique relationship a company has with one of its suppliers and its customer for European exports. Students can see that this agile program cannot exist in isolation from important stakeholders. Discussion about an opposite point of view is enriched by facts in this (B) case.
Swot Analysis of "Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox" written by Daniel Zinner, Robert D. Landel includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Bacardi Southampton facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Supply chain and Technology & Operations.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Bacardi Southampton, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Bacardi Southampton 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bacardi Southampton
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Technology & Operations field.
4. Making a Technology & Operations topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Bacardi Southampton
Strengths Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Bacardi Southampton in Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox Harvard Business Review case study are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Bacardi Southampton 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Bacardi Southampton has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Bacardi Southampton to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Bacardi Southampton 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 Daniel Zinner, Robert D. Landel 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Bacardi Southampton 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Bacardi Southampton is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management
– Bacardi Southampton is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Bacardi Southampton has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Bacardi Southampton 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.
Organizational Resilience of Bacardi Southampton
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Bacardi Southampton does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Bacardi Southampton 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 Bacardi Southampton is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Bacardi Southampton is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Bacardi Southampton 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Bacardi Southampton 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.
Weaknesses Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Bacardi Southampton 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Bacardi Southampton 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Bacardi Southampton 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox, it seems that the employees of Bacardi Southampton 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Bacardi Southampton is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Daniel Zinner, Robert D. Landel suggests that, Bacardi Southampton 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Bacardi Southampton 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 Bacardi Southampton, firm in the HBR case study Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Bacardi Southampton is planning to shift buying processes online.
Lack of clear differentiation of Bacardi Southampton products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Bacardi Southampton needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Technology & Operations 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox | 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox are -
Manufacturing automation
– Bacardi Southampton can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Technology & Operations 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Bacardi Southampton 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Bacardi Southampton is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Bacardi Southampton 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Bacardi Southampton has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Bacardi Southampton to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox case study. Bacardi Southampton can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Bacardi Southampton can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Technology & Operations industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Bacardi Southampton can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Bacardi Southampton to increase its market reach. Bacardi Southampton 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Bacardi Southampton can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Bacardi Southampton operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Technology & Operations sector.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Bacardi Southampton in the consumer business. Now Bacardi Southampton can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Bacardi Southampton 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Bacardi Southampton in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Technology & Operations segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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 Bacardi Southampton 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.
Threats Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Bacardi Southampton 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox, Bacardi Southampton may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Technology & Operations .
Environmental challenges
– Bacardi Southampton 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. Bacardi Southampton can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Technology & Operations industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Bacardi Southampton 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Bacardi Southampton has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Technology & Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Bacardi Southampton needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Technology & Operations 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.
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. Bacardi Southampton 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
– Bacardi Southampton 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Bacardi Southampton in the Technology & Operations industry. The Technology & Operations 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Bacardi Southampton 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 Technology & Operations industry regulations.
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 Bacardi Southampton in the Technology & Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Bacardi Southampton
– 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 Bacardi Southampton.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox 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 Bacardi Southampton (B): A Continental Paradox 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 Bacardi Southampton needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.