Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Global Business
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses
This case comprises four scenarios that exemplify some of the benefits of a very brief, very inexpensive educational program, El Gran Proyecto Salta (The Big Leap Project). Salta was designed to assist female micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries by teaching them basic business knowledge so that they might make the leap to the next level of success. Salta instruction was provided free of cost to more than 100,000 Peruvian women in very brief stand-alone sessions (three hours per session) at exceptionally low cost to sponsors ($38 per participant). Four women who participated in Salta are featured in this case. Each of these micro-entrepreneurs' stories includes their personal backgrounds, their adaptations of Salta lessons and experiences, and the benefits derived for their businesses, families, communities, and for themselves.
Swot Analysis of "Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses" written by Christine Pearson includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Salta Leap facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Work-life balance and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses casestudy better are - – increasing commodity prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is backlash against globalization, increasing energy prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
wage bills are increasing, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Salta Leap, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Salta Leap 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 Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Salta Leap
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 Salta Leap
Strengths Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Salta Leap in Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses Harvard Business Review case study are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Salta Leap in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management
– Salta Leap is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Diverse revenue streams
– Salta Leap is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Salta Leap 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.
Ability to lead change in Global Business field
– Salta Leap 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 Salta Leap in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Salta Leap
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Salta Leap does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Salta Leap 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 Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Salta Leap 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 Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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.
Training and development
– Salta Leap has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Salta Leap 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 Salta Leap in the sector have low bargaining power. Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Salta Leap to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Salta Leap 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Salta Leap 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Salta Leap 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses, in the dynamic environment Salta Leap has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Salta Leap has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Salta Leap is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Christine Pearson suggests that, Salta Leap 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Salta Leap 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. Salta Leap 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses, it seems that the employees of Salta Leap 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Salta Leap products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Salta Leap needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Salta Leap is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Global Business segment. Salta Leap needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Salta Leap to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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 Salta Leap has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Opportunities Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses | 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 Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses are -
Buying journey improvements
– Salta Leap can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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 Salta Leap 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 Salta Leap to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Developing new processes and practices
– Salta Leap 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Salta Leap 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Salta Leap 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Salta Leap 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, Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Salta Leap 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Salta Leap 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Salta Leap has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Salta Leap to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses case study. Salta Leap can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Salta Leap can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Salta Leap operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Global Business sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Salta Leap 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.
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. Salta Leap can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Salta Leap in the consumer business. Now Salta Leap can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses are -
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. Salta Leap can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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 Salta Leap business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Salta Leap 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 Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses .
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses, Salta Leap 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 .
Environmental challenges
– Salta Leap 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. Salta Leap can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Global Business industry.
Increasing wage structure of Salta Leap
– 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 Salta Leap.
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. Salta Leap needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Salta Leap 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Salta Leap is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Salta Leap with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Salta Leap 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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 Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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 Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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 Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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 Educating Female Micro-entrepreneurs; Making the Leap to Improve Their Businesses 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 Salta Leap needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.