Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc.
What happens when personal values and beliefs conflict with business decisions? This case, suitable for MBA, undergraduate, and executive learners, prompts engaging discussion of this issue. Oliver Sparling was a highly successful senior analyst at AFI International, a top consulting firm in Chicago with an open and tolerant workplace. He was also a gay man who had lived happily with his partner for over 10 years. Sparling encounters trouble, however, when one of the firm's clients, Bible Books, Inc., takes exception to his "inappropriate" openness about his sexuality (including wearing his commitment band). Sparling's boss calls him into the office and asks him to tone it down when he's at Bible Books, Inc. "These are not easy economic times," said the boss. "And this project is a big one for us. Basically, you're doing the company a favor if you lay low, and once the project is finished, it will be like it never happened. Besides, you know that you don't have anything to hide while you're at home here in Chicago. This is just for when you are in Birmingham." Sparling must decide what course of action to take.
Authors :: Andrew C Wicks, Jonathan Neeley, Jenny Mead
Swot Analysis of "Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc." written by Andrew C Wicks, Jonathan Neeley, Jenny Mead includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Sparling Bible facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Diversity, Ethics, Personnel policies and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. casestudy better are - – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption, increasing transportation and logistics costs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc.
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sparling Bible, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sparling Bible 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 Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sparling Bible
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 Sparling Bible
Strengths Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sparling Bible in Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. Harvard Business Review case study are -
Innovation driven organization
– Sparling Bible is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Sparling Bible has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Sparling Bible 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Analytics focus
– Sparling Bible 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 Andrew C Wicks, Jonathan Neeley, Jenny Mead 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Sparling Bible in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Sparling Bible is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management
– Sparling Bible is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Sparling Bible 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Sparling Bible 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 Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Sparling Bible 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 Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Digital Transformation in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Sparling Bible digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Sparling Bible 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Sparling Bible in the sector have low bargaining power. Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Sparling Bible to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. HBR case study mentions - Sparling Bible 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc., in the dynamic environment Sparling Bible has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Sparling Bible has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc., is just above the industry average. Sparling Bible 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 star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. 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 Sparling Bible has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Sparling Bible 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 - Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. 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 Sparling Bible 's lucrative customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Sparling Bible 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc., it seems that the employees of Sparling Bible 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Sparling Bible 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Sparling Bible 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Andrew C Wicks, Jonathan Neeley, Jenny Mead suggests that, Sparling Bible 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.
Opportunities Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. | 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 Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Sparling Bible 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 Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Sparling Bible to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Sparling Bible can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Sparling Bible can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Sparling Bible 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.
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. Sparling Bible can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Sparling Bible 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
– Sparling Bible 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Sparling Bible 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 Sparling Bible to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Sparling Bible is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. 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.
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 Sparling Bible 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Sparling Bible 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. Sparling Bible 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. Sparling Bible 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Sparling Bible 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.
Threats Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. are -
Regulatory challenges
– Sparling Bible 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Sparling Bible 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Sparling Bible has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Sparling Bible 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Sparling Bible is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Sparling Bible in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Sparling Bible 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.
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 Sparling Bible business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Sparling Bible 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.
Increasing wage structure of Sparling Bible
– 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 Sparling Bible.
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. Sparling Bible 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 Sparling Bible.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc., Sparling Bible 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 .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. 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 Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. 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 Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. 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 Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. 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 Oliver Sparling and Bible Books, Inc. 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 Sparling Bible needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
