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 - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing commodity prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, wage bills are increasing, 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 -
High brand equity
– Rumie Fancy has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Rumie Fancy to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Rumie Fancy is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Rumie Fancy 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
– Rumie Fancy 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 Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
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.
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.
Digital Transformation in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Rumie Fancy digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Rumie Fancy 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Rumie Fancy in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
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 -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved HBR case study mentions - Rumie Fancy 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.
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.
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.
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 Rumie Fancy supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Rumie Fancy vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Innovation & Entrepreneurship strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved, in the dynamic environment Rumie Fancy has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Rumie Fancy has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Rumie Fancy 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 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Rumie Fancy 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.
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.
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 -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Rumie Fancy 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Rumie Fancy can develop new processes and procedures in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Buying journey improvements
– Rumie Fancy can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Rumie Fancy can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
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 -
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.
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 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.
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. Rumie Fancy can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Rumie Fancy has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Rumie Fancy 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.
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. Rumie Fancy 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Rumie Fancy with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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.
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.
