Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
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Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country
To maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color.This case showcases the 30-year career of Naina Lal Kidwai, Chairman of HSBC India, a leading woman business leader globally. It demonstrates how Kidwai spent a lifetime overcoming barriers as a woman in a male-dominated profession and as an Indian in the global marketplace. Now, as opportunities to play a role in the environment are beginning to open up, she has to decide the next direction to take in her career.
Swot Analysis of "Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country" written by Boris Groysberg, Anjali Raina includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Kidwai Lal facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Organizational culture and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, geopolitical disruptions, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Kidwai Lal, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Kidwai Lal 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 Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Kidwai Lal
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 Kidwai Lal
Strengths Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Kidwai Lal in Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country Harvard Business Review case study are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Kidwai Lal has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Kidwai Lal 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Kidwai Lal is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management
– Kidwai Lal is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Kidwai Lal 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 Kidwai Lal is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Kidwai Lal in the sector have low bargaining power. Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Kidwai Lal to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Kidwai Lal 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 Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Kidwai Lal has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Kidwai Lal to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Innovation driven organization
– Kidwai Lal is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Organizational Resilience of Kidwai Lal
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Kidwai Lal does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Kidwai Lal is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country 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.
Ability to lead change in Global Business field
– Kidwai Lal 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 Kidwai Lal in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Kidwai Lal is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Global Business segment. Kidwai Lal needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Kidwai Lal to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Kidwai Lal 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Kidwai Lal 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 - Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Kidwai Lal 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Kidwai Lal is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Kidwai Lal 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. Kidwai Lal 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, Boris Groysberg, Anjali Raina suggests that, Kidwai Lal 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Kidwai Lal 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Kidwai Lal has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country, it seems that the employees of Kidwai Lal 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 Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country, is just above the industry average. Kidwai Lal 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.
Opportunities Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country | 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 Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Kidwai Lal 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Kidwai Lal 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Kidwai Lal 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. Kidwai Lal can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Global Business industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Kidwai Lal 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. Kidwai Lal 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Kidwai Lal 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Kidwai Lal 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, Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Kidwai Lal in the consumer business. Now Kidwai Lal can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Kidwai Lal has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Kidwai Lal to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country case study. Kidwai Lal can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Kidwai Lal can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Kidwai Lal 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 Kidwai Lal to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Developing new processes and practices
– Kidwai Lal can develop new processes and procedures in Global Business industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Kidwai Lal can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Kidwai Lal has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Kidwai Lal 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Kidwai Lal 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 Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Kidwai Lal with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Kidwai Lal.
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. Kidwai Lal needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Kidwai Lal business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Kidwai Lal 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.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Kidwai Lal in the Global Business industry. The Global Business 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 Kidwai Lal in the Global Business sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Kidwai Lal can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country, Kidwai Lal 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 .
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. Kidwai Lal 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country 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 Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country 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 Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country 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 Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country 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 Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country 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 Kidwai Lal needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.