KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Global Business
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap
In September 2016, the leadership team at KritiKal Solutions Private Limited, a software product research and development company in Noida, India, was facing several challenges. The company provided product design and development services in computer vision and image processing, embedded systems, and the Internet of things, as well as web, software, and mobile applications. It was highly regarded by its clients and employees for its research orientation and technical competence. However, the leadership team was struggling with options for strategic growth and product mix. How much time and effort should go into services and how much into new product development? What kind of structure and funding would work for the company as it expanded? The chief executive officer needed answers to these questions in order to make the leap to high growth. The authors Mita Brahma and Shiv S. Tripathi are affiliated with Management Development Institute.
Swot Analysis of "KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap" written by Mita Brahma, Shiv S. Tripathi includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Kritikal Leap facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap casestudy better are - – wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing transportation and logistics costs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Kritikal Leap, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Kritikal Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Kritikal Leap
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Global Business field.
4. Making a Global Business topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Kritikal Leap
Strengths KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Kritikal Leap in KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Kritikal Leap is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Analytics focus
– Kritikal Leap 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 Mita Brahma, Shiv S. Tripathi 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Kritikal Leap in the sector have low bargaining power. KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Kritikal Leap to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Kritikal Leap
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Kritikal Leap does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Kritikal Leap has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Kritikal Leap 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.
Training and development
– Kritikal Leap has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Kritikal Leap is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Kritikal Leap 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Kritikal Leap in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management
– Kritikal Leap is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Kritikal Leap 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 Kritikal Leap is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Kritikal Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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 Kritikal Leap 's lucrative customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Kritikal Leap 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 - KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Kritikal Leap 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap, it seems that the employees of Kritikal Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap HBR case study mentions - Kritikal Leap 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Mita Brahma, Shiv S. Tripathi suggests that, Kritikal Leap 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Kritikal Leap 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. Kritikal Leap 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Kritikal Leap is planning to shift buying processes online.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Kritikal Leap is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Global Business segment. Kritikal Leap needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Kritikal Leap to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Kritikal Leap 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Kritikal Leap 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.
Opportunities KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap | 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Global Business industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Kritikal Leap can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Kritikal Leap has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Kritikal Leap to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap case study. Kritikal Leap can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Kritikal Leap to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Loyalty marketing
– Kritikal Leap 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Kritikal Leap can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Kritikal Leap can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Kritikal Leap operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Global Business sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Kritikal Leap 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, Kritikal Leap is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Global Business industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Kritikal Leap 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. Kritikal Leap 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Kritikal Leap can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Global Business 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Kritikal Leap in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Global Business segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Kritikal Leap 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Kritikal Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Kritikal Leap to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap are -
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 Kritikal Leap in the Global Business sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Kritikal Leap.
Environmental challenges
– Kritikal Leap 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. Kritikal Leap can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Global Business industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Kritikal Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap .
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Kritikal Leap 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 Global Business industry regulations.
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. Kritikal Leap needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Kritikal Leap 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Kritikal Leap has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Kritikal Leap needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Global Business 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.
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 Kritikal Leap business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Kritikal Leap in the Global Business industry. The Global Business 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Kritikal Leap 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.
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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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 KritiKal Solutions: The Big Leap 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 Kritikal Leap needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.