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 - – technology disruption, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
increasing energy prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, 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 -
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Dalmia Bharat 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.
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.
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.
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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Global Business industry
– Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Dalmia Bharat to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Global Business industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Dalmia Bharat to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Dalmia Bharat is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Dalmia Bharat is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
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 -
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.
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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Dalmia Bharat, firm in the HBR case study Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment HBR case study mentions - Dalmia Bharat 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.
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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Dalmia Bharat 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Dalmia Bharat 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 dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Dalmia Bharat has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Utkarsh Majmudar, Namrata Rana suggests that, Dalmia Bharat 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.
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.
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.
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 -
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Dalmia Bharat has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Dalmia Bharat to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Dalmia Bharat: Social Return on Investment case study. Dalmia Bharat can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Dalmia Bharat 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.
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.
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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Dalmia Bharat 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Dalmia Bharat 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Dalmia Bharat can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Dalmia Bharat operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Global Business sector.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Dalmia Bharat 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 Dalmia Bharat to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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.
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 -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Dalmia Bharat 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.
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.
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.
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 Dalmia Bharat.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Global Business field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Dalmia Bharat can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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 .
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. Dalmia Bharat needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 .
Environmental challenges
– Dalmia Bharat 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. Dalmia Bharat can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Global Business industry.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Dalmia Bharat
– 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 Dalmia Bharat.
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.