Case Study Description of Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up
Spotfire, a software start-up, must address the question of dividing its effort between Sweden and the United States in addition to raising venture capital, obtaining new customers, and managing early-stage growth.
Swot Analysis of "Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up" written by Walter Kuemmerle, Chad Ellis includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Spotfire Dividing facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Technology, Venture capital and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up casestudy better are - – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is backlash against globalization,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Spotfire Dividing, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Spotfire Dividing 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Spotfire Dividing
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 Spotfire Dividing
Strengths Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Spotfire Dividing in Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up Harvard Business Review case study are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Spotfire Dividing in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Spotfire Dividing has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Spotfire Dividing is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Spotfire Dividing has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Spotfire Dividing 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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.
Digital Transformation in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Spotfire Dividing digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Spotfire Dividing 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.
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Spotfire Dividing 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 Spotfire Dividing in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Spotfire Dividing 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 Spotfire Dividing is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Spotfire Dividing in the sector have low bargaining power. Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Spotfire Dividing to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Spotfire Dividing 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Spotfire Dividing 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Spotfire Dividing is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Weaknesses Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Spotfire Dividing 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up, is just above the industry average. Spotfire Dividing 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Walter Kuemmerle, Chad Ellis suggests that, Spotfire Dividing 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Spotfire Dividing 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Spotfire Dividing 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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 Spotfire Dividing has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Spotfire Dividing 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Spotfire Dividing products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Spotfire Dividing needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
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 Spotfire Dividing supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Spotfire Dividing vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Spotfire Dividing is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Spotfire Dividing 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 - Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Opportunities Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up | 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Spotfire Dividing to increase its market reach. Spotfire Dividing 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.
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. Spotfire Dividing can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Spotfire Dividing 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Spotfire Dividing to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Spotfire Dividing is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Spotfire Dividing 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.
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. Spotfire Dividing 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. Spotfire Dividing 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Spotfire Dividing 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Spotfire Dividing has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Spotfire Dividing to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up case study. Spotfire Dividing can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Spotfire Dividing can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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.
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. Spotfire Dividing can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Spotfire Dividing can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Spotfire Dividing operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Spotfire Dividing 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 Spotfire Dividing 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.
Threats Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Spotfire Dividing has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Spotfire Dividing 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Spotfire Dividing 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Spotfire Dividing with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Spotfire Dividing business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Spotfire Dividing
– 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 Spotfire Dividing.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Spotfire Dividing 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.
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. Spotfire Dividing needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up, Spotfire Dividing 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 .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Spotfire Dividing is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Spotfire Dividing can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Spotfire Dividing 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 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.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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 Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-Up 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 Spotfire Dividing needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
