What's Next After an MBA? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Global Business
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of What's Next After an MBA?
In August 2016, Manish Goyal, a student in his second year of the two-year MBA program at XLRI Jamshedpur, India, had to make career-related choices about which industry, company, function, and role to pursue after his MBA. He had limited previous work experience to rely on, but rather than choosing the first job that came his way or trying to join one of the more popular firms among MBA students, Goyal sought a job that best aligned with his own career objectives. Accordingly, he sought advice from three classmates on career options in the investment banking, management consulting, and fast-moving consumer goods industries. He realized that while his friends' input was valuable, ultimately he had to make his own decisions. Atul Arun Pathak is affiliated with XLRI-Xavier School of Management.
Swot Analysis of "What's Next After an MBA?" written by Atul Arun Pathak, Manish Goyal includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Mba Goyal facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in What's Next After an MBA? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Talent management and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the What's Next After an MBA? casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing energy prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of What's Next After an MBA?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in What's Next After an MBA? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mba Goyal, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mba Goyal 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 What's Next After an MBA? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in What's Next After an MBA? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mba Goyal
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 Mba Goyal
Strengths What's Next After an MBA? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mba Goyal in What's Next After an MBA? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Mba Goyal 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Mba Goyal in the sector have low bargaining power. What's Next After an MBA? has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Mba Goyal to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Mba Goyal 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 What's Next After an MBA? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Global Business segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Mba Goyal digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Mba Goyal 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Mba Goyal 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Mba Goyal 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 What's Next After an MBA? - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Mba Goyal has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in What's Next After an MBA? 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.
Learning organization
- Mba Goyal 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 Mba Goyal is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in What's Next After an MBA? Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the What's Next After an MBA? 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.
Analytics focus
– Mba Goyal 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 Atul Arun Pathak, Manish Goyal 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.
Organizational Resilience of Mba Goyal
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Mba Goyal does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Mba Goyal is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the What's Next After an MBA? are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Weaknesses What's Next After an MBA? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of What's Next After an MBA? are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study What's Next After an MBA? 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 What's Next After an MBA? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Mba Goyal is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Mba Goyal, firm in the HBR case study What's Next After an MBA? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Mba Goyal has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study What's Next After an MBA?, in the dynamic environment Mba Goyal has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Mba Goyal has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study What's Next After an MBA?, 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Mba Goyal 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. Mba Goyal 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Mba Goyal has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As What's Next After an MBA? HBR case study mentions - Mba Goyal 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the What's Next After an MBA? 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 Mba Goyal has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Mba Goyal 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
– Mba Goyal has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Opportunities What's Next After an MBA? | 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 What's Next After an MBA? are -
Manufacturing automation
– Mba Goyal 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.
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. Mba Goyal 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, Mba Goyal can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Mba Goyal 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Mba Goyal 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Mba Goyal 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Mba Goyal to increase its market reach. Mba Goyal 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
– Mba Goyal can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. What's Next After an MBA? 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 Mba Goyal 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 Mba Goyal to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Mba Goyal 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. Mba Goyal 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.
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. Mba Goyal can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Mba Goyal 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Mba Goyal is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. What's Next After an MBA? 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.
Threats What's Next After an MBA? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study What's Next After an MBA? are -
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 Mba Goyal in the Global Business sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Mba Goyal has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Mba Goyal 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Mba Goyal 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.
Environmental challenges
– Mba Goyal needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Mba Goyal can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Global Business industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Mba Goyal 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 What's Next After an MBA? .
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 Mba Goyal business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Mba Goyal
– 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 Mba Goyal.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Mba Goyal is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Mba Goyal needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Mba Goyal 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Mba Goyal 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study What's Next After an MBA?, Mba Goyal 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 .
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of What's Next After an MBA? 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 What's Next After an MBA? 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 What's Next After an MBA? 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 What's Next After an MBA? 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 What's Next After an MBA? 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 Mba Goyal needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.