Case Study Description of Gokaldas Exports (B): Update
In August 2007, the United States-based private equity firm the Blackstone Group acquired a 50.1 percent stake in Gokaldas Exports for $116 million. The investment was a two-part deal that included an "open offer" to Gokaldas shareholders for another 20 percent of outstanding shares valued at approximately $45 million. This gave Blackstone a total share of just over 68 percent while the Hinduja family retained 20 percent and other shareholders the remainder.
Authors :: Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen, Sheila Melvin
Swot Analysis of "Gokaldas Exports (B): Update" written by Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen, Sheila Melvin includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Gokaldas Percent facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Gokaldas Exports (B): Update case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Innovation and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Gokaldas Exports (B): Update casestudy better are - – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing commodity prices,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Gokaldas Exports (B): Update
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Gokaldas Exports (B): Update case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gokaldas Percent, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gokaldas Percent 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Gokaldas Exports (B): Update case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gokaldas Percent
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 Gokaldas Percent
Strengths Gokaldas Exports (B): Update | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gokaldas Percent in Gokaldas Exports (B): Update Harvard Business Review case study are -
High brand equity
– Gokaldas Percent has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Gokaldas Percent to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Gokaldas Percent
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Gokaldas Percent does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Gokaldas Percent in the sector have low bargaining power. Gokaldas Exports (B): Update has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Gokaldas Percent to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Gokaldas Percent 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 Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen, Sheila Melvin 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Gokaldas Percent is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Gokaldas Exports (B): Update Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Gokaldas Percent 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 Gokaldas Percent in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Digital Transformation in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Gokaldas Percent digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Gokaldas Percent 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.
Training and development
– Gokaldas Percent has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Gokaldas Exports (B): Update 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry
– Gokaldas Exports (B): Update firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Gokaldas Percent to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Gokaldas Percent to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Gokaldas Percent is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Gokaldas Exports (B): Update are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Gokaldas Exports (B): Update 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gokaldas Percent 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses Gokaldas Exports (B): Update | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Gokaldas Exports (B): Update are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Gokaldas Percent is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment. Gokaldas Percent needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Gokaldas Percent to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Gokaldas Exports (B): Update 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Gokaldas Percent is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Gokaldas Exports (B): Update, is just above the industry average. Gokaldas Percent 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.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Gokaldas Percent supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Gokaldas Exports (B): Update, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Gokaldas Percent vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Gokaldas Exports (B): Update, it seems that the employees of Gokaldas Percent 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Gokaldas Exports (B): Update has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Gokaldas Percent 's lucrative customers.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Gokaldas Percent is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Gokaldas Exports (B): Update can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Gokaldas Percent products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Gokaldas Percent 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update, 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Gokaldas Percent 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. Gokaldas Percent 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Gokaldas Percent 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.
Opportunities Gokaldas Exports (B): Update | 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Gokaldas Percent is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Gokaldas Exports (B): Update 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. Gokaldas Percent can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Gokaldas Percent to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Loyalty marketing
– Gokaldas Percent 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Gokaldas Percent 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Gokaldas Percent 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Gokaldas Percent to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gokaldas Percent can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Gokaldas Percent 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Gokaldas Percent 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, Gokaldas Exports (B): Update, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Gokaldas Percent to increase its market reach. Gokaldas Percent 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Gokaldas Percent 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Gokaldas Percent can develop new processes and procedures in Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
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 Gokaldas Percent in the consumer business. Now Gokaldas Percent can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Gokaldas Exports (B): Update External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Gokaldas Exports (B): Update are -
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. Gokaldas Percent needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Gokaldas Percent 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Gokaldas Percent 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Gokaldas Percent is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Gokaldas Percent.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Gokaldas Percent 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.
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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update, Gokaldas Percent 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 .
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Gokaldas Percent 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.
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. Gokaldas Percent 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.
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 Gokaldas Percent business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Gokaldas Percent 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Gokaldas Exports (B): Update 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update 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 Gokaldas Exports (B): Update 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 Gokaldas Percent needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
