Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Global Business
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective
Ebony Jones manages asset allocation for Colorado's Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA). She is worried that some asset price measures are approaching levels observed prior to the Great Recession, and she is pondering whether she should shift PERA's asset allocation toward cash and fixed-income investments as a precaution. To put the current market situation in perspective, she looks back at the causes and consequences of the Great Recession. Were there clear warning signs of asset bubbles and impending recession prior to 2008? To what extent does today's economy resemble the pre-2008 economy, and what are the implications for Colorado's retirees and the broader economy if stocks and real estate are due for a correction? The case was written for use in Darden's Global Economies and Markets (GEM) core course during a class on the causes of the Great Recession. Each class in the course focuses on a different subset of exogenous variables in the IS/LM AD/AS model that underpins the course. This class focuses on shocks to wealth, consumer confidence, and credit supply, each of which was increasing during the run-up to the crisis and subsequently plummeted.
Swot Analysis of "Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective" written by Daniel Murphy includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Recession Colorado's facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Recession and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective casestudy better are - – wage bills are increasing, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing energy prices,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Recession Colorado's, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Recession Colorado's operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Recession Colorado's
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 Recession Colorado's
Strengths Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Recession Colorado's in Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Recession Colorado's 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Recession Colorado's is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Digital Transformation in Global Business segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Recession Colorado's digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Recession Colorado's has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Recession Colorado's is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective 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)
– Recession Colorado's has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Recession Colorado's in the sector have low bargaining power. Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Recession Colorado's to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Recession Colorado's in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High brand equity
– Recession Colorado's has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Recession Colorado's to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Recession Colorado's 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
– Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Recession Colorado's to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Global Business industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Recession Colorado's to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Recession Colorado's
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Recession Colorado's does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Analytics focus
– Recession Colorado's is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Daniel Murphy 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective 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 Recession Colorado's 's lucrative customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Recession Colorado's has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Recession Colorado's has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Recession Colorado's 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Recession Colorado's is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective, is just above the industry average. Recession Colorado's needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Lack of clear differentiation of Recession Colorado's products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Recession Colorado's needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective, in the dynamic environment Recession Colorado's has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Recession Colorado's 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective, 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Daniel Murphy suggests that, Recession Colorado's is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Recession Colorado's 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective | 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective are -
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. Recession Colorado's can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Recession Colorado's to increase its market reach. Recession Colorado's 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Recession Colorado's 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Recession Colorado's can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Recession Colorado's 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.
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. Recession Colorado's can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Recession Colorado's has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Recession Colorado's to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective case study. Recession Colorado's can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Recession Colorado's can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective 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. Recession Colorado's can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Recession Colorado's can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
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 Recession Colorado's to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
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 Recession Colorado's in the consumer business. Now Recession Colorado's can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Recession Colorado's can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Recession Colorado's to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Recession Colorado's to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Recession Colorado's has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Recession Colorado's 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.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Recession Colorado's
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Recession Colorado's.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Recession Colorado's can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Recession Colorado's with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Recession Colorado's in the Global Business sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Recession Colorado's 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Recession Colorado's high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
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 Recession Colorado's business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Recession Colorado's needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective, Recession Colorado's 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 .
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. Recession Colorado's can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Recession Colorado's will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective 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 Ten Years After the Global Financial Crisis: A Pension Fund's Retrospective 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 Recession Colorado's needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
