Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer
Drawing from a wealth of negotiation research, my previous installment of Negotiating Life advised negotiators to make the first offer if they can. But sometimes they can't. Sometimes, despite a negotiator's best efforts, the other side moves first. In this article, I provide a framework for responding to another negotiator's first offer, suggesting that the appropriate response varies markedly depending on the quality of the offer. This makes for a more comprehensive strategy for making and managing early offers in a negotiation.
Swot Analysis of "Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer" written by Brian Gunia includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Negotiator's Offer facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Strategy and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer casestudy better are - – geopolitical disruptions, technology disruption, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Negotiator's Offer, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Negotiator's Offer 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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Negotiator's Offer
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Strategy & Execution field.
4. Making a Strategy & Execution topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Negotiator's Offer
Strengths Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Negotiator's Offer in Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Negotiator's Offer is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Negotiator's Offer is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Negotiator's Offer has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Negotiator's Offer to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Negotiator's Offer has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Negotiator's Offer 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Negotiator's Offer in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Negotiator's Offer 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 Brian Gunia 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Negotiator's Offer 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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Negotiator's Offer has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Negotiator's Offer is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Learning organization
- Negotiator's Offer 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 Negotiator's Offer is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Negotiator's Offer 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Negotiator's Offer in the sector have low bargaining power. Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Negotiator's Offer to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Negotiator's Offer 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. Negotiator's Offer 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer, in the dynamic environment Negotiator's Offer has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Negotiator's Offer has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Brian Gunia suggests that, Negotiator's Offer 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Negotiator's Offer 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Negotiator's Offer 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Negotiator's Offer 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Negotiator's Offer products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Negotiator's Offer needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Negotiator's Offer 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer, it seems that the employees of Negotiator's Offer 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Negotiator's Offer, firm in the HBR case study Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer HBR case study mentions - Negotiator's Offer 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.
Opportunities Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer | 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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Negotiator's Offer is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Negotiator's Offer to increase its market reach. Negotiator's Offer 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Strategy & Execution industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Negotiator's Offer can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Negotiator's Offer 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Negotiator's Offer has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Negotiator's Offer to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer case study. Negotiator's Offer can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Negotiator's Offer 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.
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 Negotiator's Offer 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Negotiator's Offer can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Strategy & Execution segment.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Negotiator's Offer can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Negotiator's Offer 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Negotiator's Offer can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Strategy & Execution 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Strategy & Execution industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Negotiator's Offer 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. Negotiator's Offer 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Negotiator's Offer 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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Negotiator's Offer to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer are -
Increasing wage structure of Negotiator's Offer
– 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 Negotiator's Offer.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Strategy & Execution field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Negotiator's Offer can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Negotiator's Offer business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Negotiator's Offer 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.
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 Negotiator's Offer in the Strategy & Execution 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Negotiator's Offer 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer, Negotiator's Offer may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Strategy & Execution .
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Negotiator's Offer 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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer .
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. Negotiator's Offer 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Negotiator's Offer in the Strategy & Execution industry. The Strategy & Execution 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.
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 Negotiator's Offer.
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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer 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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer 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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer 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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer 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 Batten Down the Anchors: Responding to Another Negotiator's First Offer 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 Negotiator's Offer needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.