Swot Analysis of "Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions" written by William Nemitz, Dawna Travis Dewire, Richard Mandel, Ross Petty includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Bab372 Wheels facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Business processes, Entrepreneurship, Financial management, IT, Marketing and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions casestudy better are - – there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Bab372 Wheels, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Bab372 Wheels 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 Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bab372 Wheels
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 Bab372 Wheels
Strengths Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Bab372 Wheels in Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions Harvard Business Review case study are -
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Bab372 Wheels digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Bab372 Wheels 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Bab372 Wheels in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Bab372 Wheels 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 Bab372 Wheels is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Bab372 Wheels 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 Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions 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 lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Bab372 Wheels 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 Bab372 Wheels in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Bab372 Wheels 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 William Nemitz, Dawna Travis Dewire, Richard Mandel, Ross Petty 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.
High brand equity
– Bab372 Wheels has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Bab372 Wheels to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Bab372 Wheels 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 Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Bab372 Wheels
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Bab372 Wheels does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Bab372 Wheels has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Bab372 Wheels is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions 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.
Weaknesses Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Bab372 Wheels 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 - Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Bab372 Wheels 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions, it seems that the employees of Bab372 Wheels 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions, in the dynamic environment Bab372 Wheels has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Bab372 Wheels 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 Bab372 Wheels products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Bab372 Wheels needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions 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 Bab372 Wheels has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, William Nemitz, Dawna Travis Dewire, Richard Mandel, Ross Petty suggests that, Bab372 Wheels 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Bab372 Wheels 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Bab372 Wheels 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. Bab372 Wheels 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Bab372 Wheels 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions HBR case study mentions - Bab372 Wheels 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.
Opportunities Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions | 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 Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Bab372 Wheels 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 Bab372 Wheels to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Bab372 Wheels 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 Bab372 Wheels in the consumer business. Now Bab372 Wheels can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Bab372 Wheels to increase its market reach. Bab372 Wheels 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Bab372 Wheels can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Bab372 Wheels 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Bab372 Wheels 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Bab372 Wheels 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. Bab372 Wheels 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 Bab372 Wheels 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Bab372 Wheels 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 Bab372 Wheels has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Bab372 Wheels to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions case study. Bab372 Wheels can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Bab372 Wheels 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Bab372 Wheels 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.
Threats Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Bab372 Wheels 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.
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.
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 Bab372 Wheels.
Environmental challenges
– Bab372 Wheels 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. Bab372 Wheels can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Bab372 Wheels has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Bab372 Wheels 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Bab372 Wheels 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Bab372 Wheels is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Bab372 Wheels 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.
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. Bab372 Wheels needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Bab372 Wheels 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Bab372 Wheels 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.
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 Bab372 Wheels business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions 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 Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions 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 Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions 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 Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions 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 Deals on Wheels Inc., Discussion Questions 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 Bab372 Wheels needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
