Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Finance & Accounting
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include
This is the third in a series of lecture notes which, if tied together into a textbook, might be entitled "Practical Regression." The purpose of the notes is to supplement the theoretical content of most statistics texts with practical advice based on nearly three decades of experience of the author, combined with over one hundred years of experience of colleagues who have offered guidance. As the title "Practical Regression" suggests, these notes are a guide to performing regression in practice. This technical note explains how to choose predictor variables to include in regression. The note begins by explaining the many virtues of parsimony. Sometimes analysts include predictors simply because they are in the available data. Including such "junk" predictors increases the chances of obtaining confusing or misleading results. The note also explores multicollinearity, a favorite topic in some statistics classes that is rarely a problem in real world empirical work. The note concludes by explaining how to work with groups of related variables and describes how to implement the partial F test for joint significance.
Swot Analysis of "Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include" written by David Dranove includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Regression Practical facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Financial management, Market research and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include casestudy better are - – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Regression Practical, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Regression Practical 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Regression Practical
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Regression Practical
Strengths Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Regression Practical in Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Regression Practical is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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.
Organizational Resilience of Regression Practical
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Regression Practical does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Regression Practical is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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)
– Regression Practical 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to lead change in Finance & Accounting field
– Regression Practical 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 Regression Practical in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Regression Practical has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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.
Learning organization
- Regression Practical 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 Regression Practical is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Regression Practical is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Regression Practical in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Regression Practical is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Regression Practical 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.
Weaknesses Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include are -
Need for greater diversity
– Regression Practical 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Regression Practical is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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 Regression Practical has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Finance & Accounting 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Regression Practical 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Regression Practical 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. Regression Practical 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include HBR case study mentions - Regression Practical 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Regression Practical 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include, in the dynamic environment Regression Practical has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Regression Practical has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Regression Practical 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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 Regression Practical 's lucrative customers.
Opportunities Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include | 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Regression Practical 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Regression Practical to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Finance & Accounting industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Regression Practical 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. Regression Practical 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 Regression Practical in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Finance & Accounting segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Regression Practical 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Regression Practical 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Regression Practical can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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 Regression Practical can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Regression Practical is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Regression Practical can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Regression Practical operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Finance & Accounting sector.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Finance & Accounting industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Regression Practical can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Regression Practical can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Regression Practical 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 Regression Practical to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Regression Practical 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include are -
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 Regression Practical.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Regression Practical has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Finance & Accounting industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Regression Practical needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Finance & Accounting sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Regression Practical 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.
Environmental challenges
– Regression Practical 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. Regression Practical can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include, Regression Practical may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Finance & Accounting .
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 Regression Practical in the Finance & Accounting 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 Regression Practical in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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 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. Regression Practical needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Regression Practical with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Regression Practical business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Regression Practical
– 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 Regression Practical.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Regression Practical 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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 Practical Regression: Building Your Model: What Variables to Include 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 Regression Practical needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
