Swot Analysis of "Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures" written by John L. Colley, Wallace Stettinius includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Wright Jack facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Compensation, Financial management, Labor, Operations management, Regulation and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Wright Jack, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Wright Jack 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Wright Jack
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Wright Jack
Strengths Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Wright Jack in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Wright Jack is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Wright Jack is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Finance & Accounting industry
– Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Wright Jack to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Wright Jack to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Wright Jack 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 Wright Jack is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Finance & Accounting segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Wright Jack digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Wright Jack 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Wright Jack 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Wright Jack 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Wright Jack is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Wright Jack is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Wright Jack
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Wright Jack does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Wright Jack 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.
Weaknesses Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Wright Jack is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Wright Jack is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, John L. Colley, Wallace Stettinius suggests that, Wright Jack 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Wright Jack is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Finance & Accounting segment. Wright Jack needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Wright Jack to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures HBR case study mentions - Wright Jack 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures, is just above the industry average. Wright Jack 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Wright Jack products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Wright Jack needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Wright Jack 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 - Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Wright Jack 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Wright Jack 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Wright Jack 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.
Opportunities Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures | 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Wright Jack is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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
– Wright Jack can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Wright Jack to increase its market reach. Wright Jack 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Wright Jack can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Wright Jack has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Wright Jack in the consumer business. Now Wright Jack can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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. Wright Jack 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 Finance & Accounting industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Wright Jack 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. Wright Jack 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Wright Jack has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Wright Jack to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures case study. Wright Jack can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Wright Jack 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Wright Jack to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Wright Jack 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Wright Jack in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Finance & Accounting segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Finance & Accounting industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Wright Jack can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures are -
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. Wright Jack 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.
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 Wright Jack.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Wright Jack 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, Wright Jack 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures .
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 Wright Jack in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Wright Jack 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.
Increasing wage structure of Wright Jack
– 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 Wright Jack.
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. Wright Jack needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Wright Jack 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. Wright Jack can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Wright Jack is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Wright Jack 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Finance & Accounting field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Wright Jack can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Wright Jack 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #9-Dealing with External Pressures 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 Wright Jack needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
