Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B)
Supplement to case W18173. This supplementary case set follows a family business advisory team over the course of roughly three months, as they develop an action plan to guide the succession of the family business to the next generation. The cases elucidate the harm that an inexperienced advising team can unintentionally inflict and cover issues of family firm advising, transition planning, and family dynamics. This case is intended to be used with "Advising The Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (A)," 9B18M047. "Advising The Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (A)" should be assigned prior to class. "Advising The Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B)" should be distributed in class following discussion of the (A) case. Vanessa M. Strike is affiliated with University of British Columbia.
Swot Analysis of "Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B)" written by Vanessa M. Strike, Dennis Ma includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Advising Pandora's facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) casestudy better are - – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is backlash against globalization,
technology disruption, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Advising Pandora's, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Advising Pandora's 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Advising Pandora's
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Advising Pandora's
Strengths Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Advising Pandora's in Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Advising Pandora's is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Advising Pandora's 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Advising Pandora's 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 Advising Pandora's is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Advising Pandora's 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 Vanessa M. Strike, Dennis Ma 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.
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Advising Pandora's digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Advising Pandora's has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Training and development
– Advising Pandora's has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Advising Pandora's in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Advising Pandora's is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Advising Pandora's 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management
– Advising Pandora's is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Advising Pandora's in the sector have low bargaining power. Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Advising Pandora's to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Advising Pandora's 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B), in the dynamic environment Advising Pandora's has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Advising Pandora's has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Advising Pandora's is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Advising Pandora's needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Advising Pandora's to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
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 Advising Pandora's supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Advising Pandora's vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B), is just above the industry average. Advising Pandora's 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Vanessa M. Strike, Dennis Ma suggests that, Advising Pandora's 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Advising Pandora's products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Advising Pandora's needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Advising Pandora's 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B), it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Advising Pandora's is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Advising Pandora's is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Opportunities Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) | 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Advising Pandora's 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Advising Pandora's to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 Advising Pandora's 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Advising Pandora's 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
– Advising Pandora's can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People 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 Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Advising Pandora's 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. Advising Pandora's 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Advising Pandora's 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, Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B), 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
– Advising Pandora's 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Advising Pandora's in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Advising Pandora's 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, Advising Pandora's is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Advising Pandora's can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Advising Pandora's 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 Advising Pandora's to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Advising Pandora's can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Advising Pandora's with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Advising Pandora's in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Advising Pandora's 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. Advising Pandora's can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Increasing wage structure of Advising Pandora's
– 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 Advising Pandora's.
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. Advising Pandora's 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Advising Pandora's 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) .
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Advising Pandora's 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Advising Pandora's 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Advising Pandora's 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.
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.
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. Advising Pandora's needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Advising Pandora's 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 Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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 Advising the Family Firm: Opening Pandora's Box (B) 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 Advising Pandora's needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
