A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail
Calgary's city manager sought to build stronger relationships with the community to attract development and retain investment in the city. He knew that implementing the Proximity Initiative guidelines, a collaborative effort between the Railway Association of Canada and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, while intended to limit potential safety risks in the case of a derailment or volume release, would simultaneously limit urban development opportunities, particularly within the downtown. The guidelines did not consider the balance of public safety with economic diversification so specific to Calgary's context. The manager had to consider an appropriate solution for his city.
Swot Analysis of "A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail" written by Gerard Seijts, Thomas Watson includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Calgary's Proximity facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Policy, Psychology, Strategy and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail casestudy better are - – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, geopolitical disruptions, 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%, increasing energy prices,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Calgary's Proximity, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Calgary's Proximity 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Calgary's Proximity
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Organizational Development field.
4. Making a Organizational Development topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Calgary's Proximity
Strengths A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Calgary's Proximity in A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail Harvard Business Review case study are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Calgary's Proximity has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Calgary's Proximity 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.
High brand equity
– Calgary's Proximity has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Calgary's Proximity to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Calgary's Proximity 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Calgary's Proximity is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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.
Learning organization
- Calgary's Proximity 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 Calgary's Proximity is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Calgary's Proximity is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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)
– Calgary's Proximity 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Calgary's Proximity is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Calgary's Proximity in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Organizational Development segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Calgary's Proximity digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Calgary's Proximity 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
– Calgary's Proximity has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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.
Weaknesses A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Calgary's Proximity 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Calgary's Proximity 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Calgary's Proximity 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 - A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Calgary's Proximity 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. Calgary's Proximity 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail, is just above the industry average. Calgary's Proximity 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail, in the dynamic environment Calgary's Proximity has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Calgary's Proximity has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Organizational Development 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Calgary's Proximity is planning to shift buying processes online.
Lack of clear differentiation of Calgary's Proximity products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Calgary's Proximity needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Calgary's Proximity, firm in the HBR case study A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail, it seems that the employees of Calgary's Proximity 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.
Opportunities A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail | 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail are -
Buying journey improvements
– Calgary's Proximity can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Calgary's Proximity in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Organizational Development segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Calgary's Proximity 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, A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Organizational Development industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Calgary's Proximity 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. Calgary's Proximity 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 Organizational Development industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Calgary's Proximity can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Calgary's Proximity can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Calgary's Proximity 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Calgary's Proximity is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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
– Calgary's Proximity 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Calgary's Proximity can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Developing new processes and practices
– Calgary's Proximity can develop new processes and procedures in Organizational Development 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Calgary's Proximity can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Organizational Development 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Calgary's Proximity 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.
Threats A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Organizational Development field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Calgary's Proximity can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Calgary's Proximity.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Calgary's Proximity is facing in Organizational Development 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail, Calgary's Proximity may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Organizational Development .
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Calgary's Proximity 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Calgary's Proximity 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 Organizational Development industry regulations.
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.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Calgary's Proximity 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.
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. Calgary's Proximity needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Organizational Development industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Calgary's Proximity
– 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 Calgary's Proximity.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Calgary's Proximity has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Organizational Development industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Calgary's Proximity needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Organizational Development 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.
Environmental challenges
– Calgary's Proximity 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. Calgary's Proximity can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Organizational Development industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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 A Situation of Conflicting Interests: Proximity to Rail 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 Calgary's Proximity needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.