IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Finance & Accounting
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A)
In 1987, IBM changed its strategy in an attempt to become a market-driven company rather than a product-driven company. The case begins with a description of the new strategy and the reasons for the change and then describes the top-down sales planning and quota system in use under the old strategy. Concludes with a discussion of the reasons why the new strategy cannot be implemented without changing the sales planning and quota systems. The challenge for students is to design new systems to support IBM's market-driven strategy.
Swot Analysis of "IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A)" written by Robert L. Simons, Hilary A. Weston includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Quota Driven facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, IT, Motivating people, Sales, Strategic planning, Strategy execution and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) casestudy better are - – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Quota Driven, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Quota Driven 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Quota Driven
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Quota Driven
Strengths IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Quota Driven in IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) Harvard Business Review case study are -
High brand equity
– Quota Driven has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Quota Driven to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Finance & Accounting industry
– IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Quota Driven to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Quota Driven to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Finance & Accounting field
– Quota Driven 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 Quota Driven in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Quota Driven
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Quota Driven does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Quota Driven 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Quota Driven in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Quota Driven has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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
– Quota Driven is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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.
Analytics focus
– Quota Driven 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 Robert L. Simons, Hilary A. Weston can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Quota Driven 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Quota Driven has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Quota Driven 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Quota Driven are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Weaknesses IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Quota Driven products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Quota Driven needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A), is just above the industry average. Quota Driven 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Quota Driven 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Quota Driven, firm in the HBR case study IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Quota Driven is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Quota Driven 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Robert L. Simons, Hilary A. Weston suggests that, Quota Driven 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A), in the dynamic environment Quota Driven has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Quota Driven has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Quota Driven 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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 Quota Driven 's lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Quota Driven is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) | 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Quota Driven 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Quota Driven in the consumer business. Now Quota Driven can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Quota Driven 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, IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Quota Driven 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
– Quota Driven can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Quota Driven to increase its market reach. Quota Driven 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Quota Driven 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 Finance & Accounting segment.
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 Quota Driven 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Quota Driven 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 Quota Driven to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Quota Driven can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Quota Driven can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Finance & Accounting 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Quota Driven 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Quota Driven to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Quota Driven can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Quota Driven has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Finance & Accounting industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Quota Driven needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Finance & Accounting 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. Quota Driven needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Quota Driven 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A), Quota Driven may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Finance & Accounting .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Quota Driven is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Quota Driven 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 Finance & Accounting industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– Quota Driven 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. Quota Driven can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Quota Driven in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Quota Driven 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) .
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 Quota Driven in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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. Quota Driven 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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 IBM Corp.: "Make It Your Business" (A) 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 Quota Driven needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.