Case Study Description of Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion
In May 2015, Qualtrics was a rapidly growing U.S.-based software-as-a-service firm, founded in 2002. After 10 years of operating with little capital, Qualtrics raised some venture capital funding, which enabled it to initiate a rapid international expansion. The management team intended to aggressively pursue global opportunities, but first needed to make some key decisions regarding how to develop the company's Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) regional headquarters, and its European operations. Key concerns included the company's market selection and prioritization, and its best approach for developing a subsidiary and EMEA regional operations that could achieve significant scale in a short time frame. Esther Tippmann is affiliated with University College Dublin. Sinead Monaghan is affiliated with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - Newark.
Swot Analysis of "Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion" written by Esther Tippmann, Sinead Monaghan includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Qualtrics Emea facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion casestudy better are - – geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization, technology disruption, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Qualtrics Emea, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Qualtrics Emea 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Qualtrics Emea
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 Qualtrics Emea
Strengths Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Qualtrics Emea in Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion Harvard Business Review case study are -
High brand equity
– Qualtrics Emea has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Qualtrics Emea to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Innovation driven organization
– Qualtrics Emea is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Qualtrics Emea 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Qualtrics Emea has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Qualtrics Emea has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Qualtrics Emea has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Qualtrics Emea 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Qualtrics Emea is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Qualtrics Emea in the sector have low bargaining power. Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Qualtrics Emea to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to lead change in Global Business field
– Qualtrics Emea is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Qualtrics Emea in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Qualtrics Emea 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Qualtrics Emea 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 Esther Tippmann, Sinead Monaghan 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.
Organizational Resilience of Qualtrics Emea
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Qualtrics Emea does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Qualtrics Emea 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, Qualtrics Emea 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion, it seems that the employees of Qualtrics Emea 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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 Qualtrics Emea has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Esther Tippmann, Sinead Monaghan suggests that, Qualtrics Emea 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Qualtrics Emea 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Qualtrics Emea is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion HBR case study mentions - Qualtrics Emea 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion, is just above the industry average. Qualtrics Emea 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Qualtrics Emea 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Qualtrics Emea 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.
Opportunities Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion | 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Qualtrics Emea can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Qualtrics Emea 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Qualtrics Emea 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Qualtrics Emea 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 Qualtrics Emea to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Qualtrics Emea 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.
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 Qualtrics Emea in the consumer business. Now Qualtrics Emea 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 Qualtrics Emea 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Qualtrics Emea 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, Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Qualtrics Emea 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.
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. Qualtrics Emea 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. Qualtrics Emea 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Qualtrics Emea has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Qualtrics Emea to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion case study. Qualtrics Emea can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Qualtrics Emea can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Global Business segment.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Qualtrics Emea is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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.
Threats Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion are -
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 Qualtrics Emea business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Qualtrics Emea 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, Qualtrics Emea 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Qualtrics Emea with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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. Qualtrics Emea can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Regulatory challenges
– Qualtrics Emea 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Qualtrics Emea 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Qualtrics Emea 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Qualtrics Emea has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Qualtrics Emea 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.
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. Qualtrics Emea needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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
– Qualtrics Emea 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.
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 Qualtrics Emea in the Global Business sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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 Qualtrics: Rapid International Expansion 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 Qualtrics Emea needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
