Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture
This case describes the strategic and operational challenges faced by John Frederick, the founder of Wolo, an online marketplace for socially-conscious businesses. Frederick has difficult decisions to make regarding investment, brand orientation and personnel as he seeks to increase Wolo's profitability moving forward. Frederick sees great potential in focusing on the yoga products category, but needs to decide if Wolo will abandon its vision of creating the first marketplace that spans the spectrum socially-conscious products.
Swot Analysis of "Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture" written by Patrick Henry, Susan S. Harmeling includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Wolo Frederick facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture casestudy better are - – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing commodity prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Wolo Frederick, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Wolo Frederick 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Wolo Frederick
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field.
4. Making a Innovation & Entrepreneurship topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Wolo Frederick
Strengths Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Wolo Frederick in Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Wolo Frederick in the sector have low bargaining power. Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Wolo Frederick to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Wolo Frederick 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 Patrick Henry, Susan S. Harmeling 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Wolo Frederick 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.
Learning organization
- Wolo Frederick 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 Wolo Frederick is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Wolo Frederick has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Wolo Frederick to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Wolo Frederick is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Wolo Frederick has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Wolo Frederick 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Wolo Frederick 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture - 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 Wolo Frederick 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.
Digital Transformation in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Wolo Frederick digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Wolo Frederick 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.
Organizational Resilience of Wolo Frederick
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Wolo Frederick does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Wolo Frederick 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 - Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Wolo Frederick is planning to shift buying processes online.
Lack of clear differentiation of Wolo Frederick products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Wolo Frederick needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Wolo Frederick 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture HBR case study mentions - Wolo Frederick 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.
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 Wolo Frederick supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Wolo Frederick vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Wolo Frederick, firm in the HBR case study Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture, in the dynamic environment Wolo Frederick has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Wolo Frederick has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture, it seems that the employees of Wolo Frederick 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture, is just above the industry average. Wolo Frederick 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Wolo Frederick 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.
Opportunities Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture | 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Wolo Frederick 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Wolo Frederick can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Wolo Frederick in the consumer business. Now Wolo Frederick can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Wolo Frederick 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Wolo Frederick to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Wolo Frederick 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, Wolo Frederick 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Wolo Frederick can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Wolo Frederick 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. Wolo Frederick 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Wolo Frederick in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– Wolo Frederick can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Wolo Frederick 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 Wolo Frederick to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Wolo Frederick can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Wolo Frederick operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Wolo Frederick 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment.
Threats Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture are -
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.
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 Wolo Frederick.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Wolo Frederick 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.
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. Wolo Frederick needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Wolo Frederick 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Wolo Frederick 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry regulations.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Wolo Frederick with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Wolo Frederick is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Wolo Frederick 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Wolo Frederick can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Wolo Frederick 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture, Wolo Frederick may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Innovation & Entrepreneurship .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Wolo Frederick has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Wolo Frederick needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture 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 Wolo: The Highs and Lows of a Socially-Conscious Venture 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 Wolo Frederick needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.