Case Study Description of Casuarinas Educational Corp.
This case is available in only hard copy format (HBP does not have digital distribution rights to the content). As a result, a digital Educator Copy of the case is not available through this web site.Casuarinas has developed a very successful elementary, now secondary, school based on excellence in teaching, service, and multilingual education. Peru lacks similar high-quality post-secondary institutions. This case focuses on the potential entry of Casuarinas into the post-secondary educational market.
Authors :: Michael J. Roberts, Howard H. Stevenson, Matthew C. Lieb
Swot Analysis of "Casuarinas Educational Corp." written by Michael J. Roberts, Howard H. Stevenson, Matthew C. Lieb includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Casuarinas Secondary facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Casuarinas Educational Corp. case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Emerging markets, Entrepreneurship, Managing uncertainty and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Casuarinas Educational Corp. casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, wage bills are increasing, increasing commodity prices,
technology disruption, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Casuarinas Educational Corp.
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Casuarinas Educational Corp. case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Casuarinas Secondary, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Casuarinas Secondary 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 Casuarinas Educational Corp. can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Casuarinas Educational Corp. case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Casuarinas Secondary
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field.
4. Making a Innovation & Entrepreneurship topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Casuarinas Secondary
Strengths Casuarinas Educational Corp. | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Casuarinas Secondary in Casuarinas Educational Corp. Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Casuarinas Secondary has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Training and development
– Casuarinas Secondary has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Casuarinas Secondary in the sector have low bargaining power. Casuarinas Educational Corp. has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Casuarinas Secondary to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Casuarinas Secondary 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 Casuarinas Secondary is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Casuarinas Educational Corp. Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Casuarinas Secondary is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Casuarinas Educational Corp. are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry
– Casuarinas Educational Corp. firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Casuarinas Secondary to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Casuarinas Secondary to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Casuarinas Secondary is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Casuarinas Secondary 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 Casuarinas Secondary in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management
– Casuarinas Secondary is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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.
Weaknesses Casuarinas Educational Corp. | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Casuarinas Educational Corp. are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Casuarinas Secondary, firm in the HBR case study Casuarinas Educational Corp. needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Casuarinas Educational Corp., is just above the industry average. Casuarinas Secondary 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 Casuarinas Secondary products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Casuarinas Secondary needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Casuarinas Educational Corp., it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Casuarinas Secondary 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 - Casuarinas Educational Corp. should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Casuarinas Educational Corp. HBR case study mentions - Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Casuarinas Educational Corp., in the dynamic environment Casuarinas Secondary has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Casuarinas Secondary has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities Casuarinas Educational Corp. | 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 Casuarinas Educational Corp. are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Casuarinas Secondary can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Casuarinas Secondary operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Casuarinas Secondary 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, Casuarinas Educational Corp., to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Casuarinas Secondary 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. Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Casuarinas Secondary can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Casuarinas Secondary has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Casuarinas Secondary to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Casuarinas Educational Corp. case study. Casuarinas Secondary can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Casuarinas Secondary in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Casuarinas Secondary is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Casuarinas Secondary can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Casuarinas Secondary to increase its market reach. Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Casuarinas Secondary can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Casuarinas Educational Corp. External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Casuarinas Educational Corp. are -
Regulatory challenges
– Casuarinas Secondary 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry regulations.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Casuarinas Secondary can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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 Casuarinas Secondary.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Casuarinas Secondary 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Casuarinas Educational Corp., Casuarinas Secondary may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Innovation & Entrepreneurship .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Casuarinas Secondary 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 Casuarinas Secondary in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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 Casuarinas Secondary in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Casuarinas Secondary needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Casuarinas Secondary 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 Casuarinas Educational Corp. .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Casuarinas Secondary has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Casuarinas Secondary needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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 Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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 Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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 Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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 Casuarinas Educational Corp. 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 Casuarinas Secondary needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
