Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved
In fall of 2015, the Toronto, Canada-based education technology non-profit Rumie had distributed thousands of computer tablets preloaded with collections of thousands of pieces of curated educational content to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in some of the most impoverished countries around the world that lacked basic educational resources. Founder and executive director Tariq Fancy, with his team, were deciding whether to accept a large new order from an NGO in Pakistan that would require Rumie for the first time to provide ongoing services such as teacher training, performance monitoring, and other support. Some on the team felt that providing a full suite of bundled services would detract from their recent push to decouple Rumie's software and services from the physical tablets to achieve greater reach and scale. In October 2015, Rumie opened the LearnCloud, its proprietary online content curation portal for NGOs, to the public. Now anyone could discover, share, and rate free digital educational content from any source. Fancy considered, "Education Access represents a big order and huge growth, but does it lead us into doing things we haven't done before, may not be good at, and may not be scalable to be used by different partners in different geographies?"
Swot Analysis of "Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved" written by John J-H Kim, Amram Migdal includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Rumie Fancy facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Innovation, Social enterprise, Technology and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved casestudy better are - – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization, technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Rumie Fancy, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Rumie Fancy 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Rumie Fancy
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 Rumie Fancy
Strengths Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Rumie Fancy in Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry
– Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Rumie Fancy to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Rumie Fancy to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Rumie Fancy has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Rumie Fancy 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.
Organizational Resilience of Rumie Fancy
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Rumie Fancy does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Rumie Fancy has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Rumie Fancy is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Strong track record of project management
– Rumie Fancy is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Rumie Fancy 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Rumie Fancy 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.
Learning organization
- Rumie Fancy 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 Rumie Fancy is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Rumie Fancy in the sector have low bargaining power. Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Rumie Fancy to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Rumie Fancy 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 John J-H Kim, Amram Migdal 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Weaknesses Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved are -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Rumie Fancy 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 Rumie Fancy products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Rumie Fancy needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Rumie Fancy 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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 Rumie Fancy 's lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Rumie Fancy is planning to shift buying processes online.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Rumie Fancy has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved, it seems that the employees of Rumie Fancy 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Rumie Fancy 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 - Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Rumie Fancy is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment. Rumie Fancy needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Rumie Fancy to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Rumie Fancy is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, John J-H Kim, Amram Migdal suggests that, Rumie Fancy 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved | 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved are -
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. Rumie Fancy 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. Rumie Fancy 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Rumie Fancy 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Rumie Fancy 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.
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 Rumie Fancy 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Rumie Fancy 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Rumie Fancy has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Rumie Fancy to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved case study. Rumie Fancy can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Rumie Fancy can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Rumie Fancy 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Rumie Fancy to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 Rumie Fancy in the consumer business. Now Rumie Fancy can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Rumie Fancy 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Rumie Fancy 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, Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Rumie Fancy is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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 Rumie Fancy 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Rumie Fancy in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Rumie Fancy in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Rumie Fancy 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.
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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved, Rumie Fancy 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
– Rumie Fancy 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Rumie Fancy 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.
Increasing wage structure of Rumie Fancy
– 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 Rumie Fancy.
Environmental challenges
– Rumie Fancy needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Rumie Fancy can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry.
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 Rumie Fancy is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Rumie Fancy 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, Rumie Fancy 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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 Rumie Fancy needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.