Case Study Description of SCORE Community Ventures
Greg Widmyer is contemplating the financial structure of a new initiative by SCORE Learning Centers (a for-profit company that provides after-school education programs). The new organization, SCORE Community Ventures, is based on the successful experience that SCORE had with its first attempts in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to take its after-school program to low-income areas. The center in Bedford-Stuyvesant was a partnership with the Restoration Corp., a nonprofit community development organization. The partnership was ultimately successful (and modestly profitable) and offered an example of how SCORE could take its model to disadvantaged areas. SCORE Community Ventures will scale the idea and take SCORE to disadvantaged areas nationwide. Greg Widmyer is seeking funding for this venture and must decide the best structure for this organization based on lessons learned from Bedford-Stuyvesant, operational considerations, and the demands and preferences of potential funders. The goal is to establish a scalable and sustainable organization.
Swot Analysis of "SCORE Community Ventures" written by Maureen McNichols, James R. Willcox includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Score Bedford facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in SCORE Community Ventures case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Joint ventures, Strategic planning and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the SCORE Community Ventures casestudy better are - – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of SCORE Community Ventures
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in SCORE Community Ventures case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Score Bedford, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Score Bedford 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 SCORE Community Ventures can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in SCORE Community Ventures case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Score Bedford
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 Score Bedford
Strengths SCORE Community Ventures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Score Bedford in SCORE Community Ventures Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Score Bedford 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.
Analytics focus
– Score Bedford 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 Maureen McNichols, James R. Willcox 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Score Bedford 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Score Bedford in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management
– Score Bedford is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Score Bedford has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Score Bedford to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Score Bedford has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in SCORE Community Ventures 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Score Bedford in the sector have low bargaining power. SCORE Community Ventures has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Score Bedford to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Score Bedford is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in SCORE Community Ventures 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the SCORE Community Ventures 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Score Bedford 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 SCORE Community Ventures HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Score Bedford has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Score Bedford 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.
Weaknesses SCORE Community Ventures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of SCORE Community Ventures are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Score Bedford 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Score Bedford 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Maureen McNichols, James R. Willcox suggests that, Score Bedford 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study SCORE Community Ventures, it seems that the employees of Score Bedford 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 SCORE Community Ventures, is just above the industry average. Score Bedford 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study SCORE Community Ventures 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 SCORE Community Ventures can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Score Bedford is planning to shift buying processes online.
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 Score Bedford supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - SCORE Community Ventures, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Score Bedford vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Score Bedford is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study SCORE Community Ventures 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 Score Bedford products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Score Bedford needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Score Bedford is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Finance & Accounting segment. Score Bedford needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Score Bedford to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the SCORE Community Ventures 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 Score Bedford has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Opportunities SCORE Community Ventures | 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 SCORE Community Ventures are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Score Bedford 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 SCORE Community Ventures - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Score Bedford to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Score Bedford to increase its market reach. Score Bedford 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Score Bedford can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. SCORE Community Ventures 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Score Bedford 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Score Bedford 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 Score Bedford to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Score Bedford 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 Score Bedford in the consumer business. Now Score Bedford can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Score Bedford 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, SCORE Community Ventures, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Score Bedford 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.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Score Bedford can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Score Bedford 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Score Bedford has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Score Bedford to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the SCORE Community Ventures case study. Score Bedford can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Score Bedford 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.
Threats SCORE Community Ventures External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study SCORE Community Ventures are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Score Bedford 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 SCORE Community Ventures .
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study SCORE Community Ventures, Score Bedford 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 .
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Score Bedford high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Score Bedford.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Score Bedford 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.
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. Score Bedford 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Score Bedford 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. Score Bedford needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Score Bedford 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.
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 Score Bedford in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Score Bedford can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Score Bedford
– 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 Score Bedford.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of SCORE Community Ventures 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 SCORE Community Ventures 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 SCORE Community Ventures 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 SCORE Community Ventures 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 SCORE Community Ventures 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 Score Bedford needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.