Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Global Business
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland
Examines Gerber Products Co.'s evaluation of Alima S.A., one of Poland's largest food processing plants, as a potential overseas investment in 1991. Factors that influenced Gerber's decision are discussed in detail: property rights, taxation issues, and Poland's political economy.
Swot Analysis of "Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland" written by Allegra Young, Debora L. Spar includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Gerber Poland's facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Managing uncertainty, Mergers & acquisitions and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland casestudy better are - – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is backlash against globalization, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gerber Poland's, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gerber Poland's 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gerber Poland's
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Global Business field.
4. Making a Global Business topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Gerber Poland's
Strengths Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gerber Poland's in Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland Harvard Business Review case study are -
Analytics focus
– Gerber Poland's 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 Allegra Young, Debora L. Spar 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Gerber Poland's 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Gerber Poland's has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Gerber Poland's 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Gerber Poland's are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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.
Digital Transformation in Global Business segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Gerber Poland's digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Gerber Poland's has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Gerber Poland's in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Gerber Poland's is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Diverse revenue streams
– Gerber Poland's is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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.
Learning organization
- Gerber Poland's 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 Gerber Poland's is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Gerber Poland's has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Gerber Poland's to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gerber Poland's 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Gerber Poland's is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Gerber Poland's 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Gerber Poland's 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 - Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland HBR case study mentions - Gerber Poland's 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland, is just above the industry average. Gerber Poland's 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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 Gerber Poland's has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Gerber Poland's is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Global Business segment. Gerber Poland's needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Gerber Poland's to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Need for greater diversity
– Gerber Poland's 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, Allegra Young, Debora L. Spar suggests that, Gerber Poland's 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Global Business 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Gerber Poland's is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Opportunities Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland | 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Gerber Poland's is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Gerber Poland's can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Gerber Poland's can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Gerber Poland's operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Global Business sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Gerber Poland's 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Gerber Poland's 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 Global Business segment.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Gerber Poland's 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.
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 Gerber Poland's in the consumer business. Now Gerber Poland's can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Gerber Poland's in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Global Business segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gerber Poland's can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Gerber Poland's 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 Gerber Poland's to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Gerber Poland's 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, Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Gerber Poland's 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.
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. Gerber Poland's can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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. Gerber Poland's needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Global Business field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Gerber Poland's can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Gerber Poland's is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Gerber Poland's 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. Gerber Poland's 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.
Increasing wage structure of Gerber Poland's
– 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 Gerber Poland's.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Gerber Poland's 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 Gerber Poland's.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Gerber Poland's 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland .
Regulatory challenges
– Gerber Poland's 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 Global Business industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Gerber Poland's has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Gerber Poland's needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Global Business 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Gerber Poland's 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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 Gerber Products Co.: Investing in the New Poland 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 Gerber Poland's needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
