Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Global Business
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment
In 2016, Dalmia Bharat Cement Limited (Dalmia Cement) and its agency, the Dalmia Bharat Foundation, worked in the areas of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. It worked with communities in the neighbourhoods of its plants and with rural communities in many other areas, focusing on soil and water conservation. In 2016 there was a growing concern that its water harvesting structures and methods of soil protection and improvement were no longer good enough. A measure that valued water in financial terms was required to help justify the foundation's targets and funding. The company tasked interns from a well-known management institute with searching for such a measure. Utkarsh Majmudar is affiliated with Indian Institute of Management Udaipur.
Swot Analysis of "Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment" written by Utkarsh Majmudar, Namrata Rana includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Dalmia Bharat facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Manufacturing, Social responsibility, Sustainability and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment casestudy better are - – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
increasing energy prices, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Dalmia Bharat, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Dalmia Bharat 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Dalmia Bharat
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 Dalmia Bharat
Strengths Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Dalmia Bharat in Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Dalmia Bharat 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Dalmia Bharat 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 Dalmia Bharat is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Dalmia Bharat 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment - 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
– Dalmia Bharat is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Dalmia Bharat has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Dalmia Bharat 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Dalmia Bharat in the sector have low bargaining power. Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Dalmia Bharat to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Dalmia Bharat has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Dalmia Bharat to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Dalmia Bharat has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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
– Dalmia Bharat is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Dalmia Bharat 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.
Analytics focus
– Dalmia Bharat 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 Utkarsh Majmudar, Namrata Rana 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.
Weaknesses Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment, it seems that the employees of Dalmia Bharat 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Dalmia Bharat 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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 Dalmia Bharat 's lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Dalmia Bharat is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Dalmia Bharat has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Lack of clear differentiation of Dalmia Bharat products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Dalmia Bharat needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Global Business 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Dalmia Bharat 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 - Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Dalmia Bharat 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Dalmia Bharat 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. Dalmia Bharat 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Dalmia Bharat is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment | 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment are -
Buying journey improvements
– Dalmia Bharat can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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.
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. Dalmia Bharat 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. Dalmia Bharat 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.
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. Dalmia Bharat can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Manufacturing automation
– Dalmia Bharat 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.
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. Dalmia Bharat can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Dalmia Bharat can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Dalmia Bharat is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Dalmia Bharat 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Dalmia Bharat to increase its market reach. Dalmia Bharat 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Dalmia Bharat 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Dalmia Bharat to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Dalmia Bharat 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Dalmia Bharat can develop new processes and procedures in Global Business industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
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 Dalmia Bharat in the consumer business. Now Dalmia Bharat can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment are -
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment, Dalmia Bharat may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Global Business .
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. Dalmia Bharat 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Dalmia Bharat 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Dalmia Bharat 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Dalmia Bharat has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Dalmia Bharat 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Dalmia Bharat 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Dalmia Bharat 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Dalmia Bharat 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Dalmia Bharat is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Dalmia Bharat business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Dalmia Bharat with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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 Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment 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 Dalmia Bharat needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.