Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
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Case Study Description of Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?
A new concern is beginning to gain notoriety in society: human trafficking. This issue, which can result in slavery, should concern businesses. Almost 30 million slaves exist globally today. The fact that human trafficking is a $32 billion business indicates either indifference for human rights or an ignorance of the injustice occurring. Even though companies may be against the idea of human trafficking, they may not recognize that they could be contributing to this problem through their business operations and relationships. However, companies can exercise social responsibility by using their influence over suppliers and business partners to prohibit human trafficking. This article examines the extent to which companies are involved in combating human trafficking, and helps companies identify where they are at risk for involvement with human trafficking. Moreover, steps are suggested to prevent human trafficking from occurring within company operations and supply chains.
Swot Analysis of "Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?" written by Katherine Taken Smith, Teresa Betts includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Trafficking Human facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Supply chain and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing energy prices, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Trafficking Human, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Trafficking Human
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 Trafficking Human
Strengths Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Trafficking Human in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Innovation driven organization
– Trafficking Human is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Diverse revenue streams
– Trafficking Human is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Trafficking Human in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Trafficking Human 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 Trafficking Human is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Trafficking Human has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Trafficking Human to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Global Business field
– Trafficking Human 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 Trafficking Human in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management
– Trafficking Human is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Trafficking Human in the sector have low bargaining power. Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Trafficking Human to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Trafficking Human 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 Katherine Taken Smith, Teresa Betts 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 Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Trafficking Human is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Trafficking Human 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 - Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Trafficking Human 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. Trafficking Human 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Katherine Taken Smith, Teresa Betts suggests that, Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?, 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Trafficking Human, firm in the HBR case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Trafficking Human products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Trafficking Human needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?, is just above the industry average. Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Trafficking Human has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Trafficking Human 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Trafficking Human is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? | 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Trafficking Human to increase its market reach. Trafficking Human 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.
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 Trafficking Human 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Trafficking Human 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Trafficking Human to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Trafficking Human can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Trafficking Human has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Trafficking Human to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? case study. Trafficking Human can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Trafficking Human 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Trafficking Human 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 Trafficking Human to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Trafficking Human is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Trafficking Human 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Global Business industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Trafficking Human 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, Trafficking Human 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, Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Manufacturing automation
– Trafficking Human can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Global Business 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.
Threats Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Trafficking Human with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? .
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 Trafficking Human.
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 Trafficking Human business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Trafficking Human in the Global Business sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Trafficking Human 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 Trafficking Human is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Trafficking Human has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Trafficking Human 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 Trafficking Human 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.
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 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. Trafficking Human needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?, Trafficking Human may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Global Business .
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. Trafficking Human can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Trafficking Human needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
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