Swot Analysis of "Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande" written by Bhaskar Chakravorti, Shirley M. Spence includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Amee Chande facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , geopolitical disruptions, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Amee Chande, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Amee Chande 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 Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Amee Chande
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 Amee Chande
Strengths Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Amee Chande in Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande Harvard Business Review case study are -
Organizational Resilience of Amee Chande
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Amee Chande does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Amee Chande 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 Amee Chande is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Amee Chande has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Amee Chande has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Amee Chande 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.
High brand equity
– Amee Chande has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Amee Chande to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Amee Chande in the sector have low bargaining power. Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Amee Chande to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Amee Chande 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Amee Chande in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Amee Chande 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 Amee Chande 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 Amee Chande digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Amee Chande 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Amee Chande is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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.
Weaknesses Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande, it seems that the employees of Amee Chande 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Amee Chande 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. Amee Chande 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.
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 Amee Chande supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Amee Chande vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Amee Chande has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande HBR case study mentions - Amee Chande 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Amee Chande 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Bhaskar Chakravorti, Shirley M. Spence suggests that, Amee Chande 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande, in the dynamic environment Amee Chande has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Amee Chande has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Lack of clear differentiation of Amee Chande products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Amee Chande needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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 Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Amee Chande is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Amee Chande, firm in the HBR case study Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande | 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 Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande are -
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. Amee Chande can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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. Amee Chande can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Amee Chande 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Amee Chande is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Amee Chande 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Amee Chande to increase its market reach. Amee Chande 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.
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. Amee Chande 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. Amee Chande 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Amee Chande 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 Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Amee Chande to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Amee Chande can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Amee Chande 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Amee Chande can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Amee Chande 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, Amee Chande 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, Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Amee Chande has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Amee Chande to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande case study. Amee Chande can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande, Amee Chande 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
– Amee Chande 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.
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 Amee Chande.
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. Amee Chande can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Amee Chande in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Amee Chande 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.
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. Amee Chande 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Amee Chande 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.
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 Amee Chande business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Amee Chande 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Amee Chande 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Amee Chande 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 Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Amee Chande is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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 Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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 Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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 Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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 Life Journey Profile: Amee Chande 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 Amee Chande needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
