Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
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Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry
Onion prices have been particularly volatile in India, reaching an all-time high of Rs. 100 in the month of October 2013 in certain parts of the country. The core of the onion price problem appears to stem from massive hoarding by cartels of intermediaries. How can this be stopped? Are there deeper problems with India's agricultural policies that belie the onion market failures? Onion is an important commodity for Indians of all classes; it is also the one that has swung political fortunes in India. The state of affairs in the onion market is indicative of gaping policy holes in the Indian agricultural markets. As India gears for the national elections in 2014, there is heightened interest in policy manifestos of the competing political parties. A history of policy measures adopted by past governments of India and the effects of these measures are outlined in this case. The case provides a platform for students to discuss the appropriateness of various policy measures with respect to agricultural produce marketing in India.
Swot Analysis of "Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry" written by Sreelata Jonnalagedda includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Onion India facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Pricing and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry casestudy better are - – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is backlash against globalization, geopolitical disruptions, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Onion India, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Onion India
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 Onion India
Strengths Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Onion India in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Onion India 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Onion India has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Onion India 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.
Learning organization
- Onion India 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 Onion India is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Finance & Accounting segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Onion India digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Onion India 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.
Training and development
– Onion India has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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.
Organizational Resilience of Onion India
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Onion India does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Onion India is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Onion India is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Strong track record of project management
– Onion India is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Onion India 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 harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Onion India is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Onion India products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Onion India has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Onion India is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Finance & Accounting segment. Onion India needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Onion India to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Sreelata Jonnalagedda suggests that, Onion India 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Onion India, firm in the HBR case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Onion India 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. Onion India 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry, it seems that the employees of Onion India 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Onion India 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry | 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry are -
Loyalty marketing
– Onion India 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Onion India 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Onion India to increase its market reach. Onion India 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Onion India 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 Onion India to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Onion India to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Onion India can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Finance & Accounting 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Onion India can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Onion India 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Onion India 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Onion India 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.
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. Onion India 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. Onion India 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Onion India can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Onion India 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 Finance & Accounting segment.
Threats Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry are -
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. Onion India needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Onion India 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry, Onion India 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 .
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Onion India 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Onion India is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Onion India
– 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 Onion India.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Finance & Accounting field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Onion India can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Onion India in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Onion India 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. Onion India can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
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 Onion India.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Onion India 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Tears With Them, Tears Without: Onion Prices Make India Cry 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 Onion India needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.