Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Technology & Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure
Trend Micro, an antivirus and Internet content security software provider, accidentally releases a flawed pattern file update that disables users' computers. The primary impact is on users in Japan, where 150,000 customers are affected. As the media press for answers and the stock price plummets, Eva Chen (CEO) and Akihiko Omikawa (president of Trend Micro Japan) must decide how to respond.
Swot Analysis of "Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure" written by Alice M. Tybout includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Micro Trend facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing, Organizational culture, Technology and Technology & Operations.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure casestudy better are - – there is backlash against globalization, technology disruption, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, geopolitical disruptions, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Micro Trend, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Micro Trend 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Micro Trend
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 Micro Trend
Strengths Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Micro Trend in Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure Harvard Business Review case study are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Micro Trend 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Micro Trend in the sector have low bargaining power. Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Micro Trend to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Micro Trend 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Micro Trend 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 Micro Trend is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Micro Trend has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure 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 Technology & Operations industry
– Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Micro Trend to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Technology & Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Micro Trend to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Micro Trend is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
High brand equity
– Micro Trend has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Micro Trend to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure 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.
Digital Transformation in Technology & Operations segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Micro Trend digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Micro Trend 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.
Organizational Resilience of Micro Trend
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Micro Trend does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Analytics focus
– Micro Trend 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 Alice M. Tybout 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.
Weaknesses Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Micro Trend 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Micro Trend, firm in the HBR case study Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure, it seems that the employees of Micro Trend 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Micro Trend is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Alice M. Tybout suggests that, Micro Trend 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Micro Trend is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure, is just above the industry average. Micro Trend needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Micro Trend 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Micro Trend 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure, in the dynamic environment Micro Trend has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Micro Trend has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Micro Trend has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Opportunities Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure | 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure are -
Loyalty marketing
– Micro Trend 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 Technology & Operations industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Micro Trend 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 Micro Trend 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 Technology & Operations segment.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Micro Trend has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Micro Trend to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure case study. Micro Trend can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Micro Trend 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 Micro Trend to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Micro Trend 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Micro Trend to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Micro Trend 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Micro Trend 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Micro Trend 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Micro Trend 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Micro Trend can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Technology & Operations industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Micro Trend 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. Micro Trend 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.
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 Micro Trend 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Micro Trend is facing in Technology & Operations sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Micro Trend can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Micro Trend 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 Micro Trend
– 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 Micro Trend.
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 Micro Trend business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Micro Trend 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure, Micro Trend 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 .
Consumer confidence and its impact on Micro Trend 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.
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.
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 Micro Trend.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Micro Trend has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Technology & Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Micro Trend 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.
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. Micro Trend needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Technology & Operations industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure 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 Trend Micro (A): Responding to a Service Failure 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 Micro Trend needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.