Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry
The case follows the career path of Megha Malagatti, from her humble Indian origins as a member of the Dalit caste (known as "untouchables") to a senior management position in a French luxury goods company - an improbable journey that speaks to her personal strengths, skills and qualifications, as well as the possibilities open to young women to make a career in the luxury goods industry irrespective of their background. It opens a window on gender diversity in the executive suite, highlighting the company culture of S.T.Dupont and the CEO who mentored her.
Authors :: Frederic Godart, Brian Henry, Antoine Tirard, Claire Harbour-Lyell
Swot Analysis of "Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry" written by Frederic Godart, Brian Henry, Antoine Tirard, Claire Harbour-Lyell includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Luxury Career facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Coaching, Emotional intelligence, Human resource management, Leadership and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices,
wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Luxury Career, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Luxury Career 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Luxury Career
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Luxury Career
Strengths Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Luxury Career in Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry Harvard Business Review case study are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Luxury Career has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Luxury Career 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.
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Luxury Career 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 Luxury Career in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Luxury Career 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Luxury Career 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Luxury Career 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Luxury Career in the sector have low bargaining power. Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Luxury Career to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Luxury Career 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Luxury Career is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management
– Luxury Career is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Luxury Career digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Luxury Career 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Luxury Career is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Weaknesses Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Luxury Career 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. Luxury Career 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.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Luxury Career supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Luxury Career vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Luxury Career is planning to shift buying processes online.
Need for greater diversity
– Luxury Career 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry, in the dynamic environment Luxury Career has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Luxury Career has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Lack of clear differentiation of Luxury Career products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Luxury Career needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Luxury Career 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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 Luxury Career 's lucrative customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Luxury Career 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 Luxury Career, firm in the HBR case study Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Luxury Career 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry | 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Luxury Career 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
– Luxury Career 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
– Luxury Career 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Luxury Career 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 Luxury Career 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Luxury Career can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Luxury Career has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Luxury Career to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Luxury Career can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Luxury Career can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Luxury Career 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Luxury Career has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Luxury Career to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry case study. Luxury Career can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Luxury Career is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Luxury Career in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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 Luxury Career business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Luxury Career in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People 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.
Environmental challenges
– Luxury Career 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. Luxury Career can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Luxury Career 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
– Luxury Career 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 Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Luxury Career 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Luxury Career with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry, Luxury Career may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Luxury Career 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.
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 Luxury Career.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Luxury Career is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Luxury Career has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Luxury Career needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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 Developing a (Second) Career and Leadership Skills in the Global Luxury Industry 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 Luxury Career needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
