Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Technology & Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use
Describes how Nick Leeson, a Barings trader in Singapore, concealed his unauthorized trading activities, how Barings blindly financed them, and how the internal and external controls failed to identify the mounting losses. Identifies areas of poor internal control, inadequate computer systems, and a breakdown in information flow. Also discusses the failure of internal and external audit and regulatory systems.
Authors :: Stewart Hamilton, Donald A. Marchand, Alicia Bernard
Swot Analysis of "Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use" written by Stewart Hamilton, Donald A. Marchand, Alicia Bernard includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Barings Internal facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Corporate governance, Organizational structure, Performance measurement and Technology & Operations.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use casestudy better are - – geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Barings Internal, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Barings Internal 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Barings Internal
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 Barings Internal
Strengths Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Barings Internal in Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use Harvard Business Review case study are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Barings Internal 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Technology & Operations industry
– Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Barings Internal to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Technology & Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Barings Internal to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Barings Internal in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Technology & Operations field
– Barings Internal 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 Barings Internal in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Barings Internal has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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
- Barings Internal 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 Barings Internal is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Barings Internal 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Barings Internal 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
– Barings Internal is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Barings Internal is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Barings Internal in the sector have low bargaining power. Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Barings Internal to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Barings Internal is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Technology & Operations segment. Barings Internal needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Barings Internal to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use, 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Barings Internal is planning to shift buying processes online.
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 Barings Internal supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Barings Internal vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Barings Internal 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. Barings Internal 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Barings Internal products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Barings Internal needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Barings Internal 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use, it seems that the employees of Barings Internal 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 strategic competitive environment developments
– As Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use HBR case study mentions - Barings Internal 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Barings Internal has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Barings Internal 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.
Opportunities Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use | 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use are -
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. Barings Internal 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 Barings Internal to increase its market reach. Barings Internal 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Barings Internal has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Barings Internal to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use case study. Barings Internal 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 Barings Internal 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Barings Internal 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, Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Barings Internal can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Barings Internal 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Barings Internal 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 Barings Internal to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Barings Internal 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. Barings Internal 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Barings Internal 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Barings Internal 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Barings Internal is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Barings Internal 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Barings Internal to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Barings Internal 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.
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.
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. Barings Internal needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Technology & Operations industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Barings Internal 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.
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 Barings Internal.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Barings Internal 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 Barings Internal in the Technology & Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Technology & Operations field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Barings Internal can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Barings Internal is facing in Technology & Operations sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Barings Internal 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use, Barings Internal 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 .
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 Barings Internal business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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 Barings Collapse (B): Failures in Control and Information Use 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 Barings Internal needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
