Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities
The (B) case explained how Movile expanded their business, moving into the smartphone market from their core business of feature phones in Latin America. The case described the two parts of Movile's strategy. The first was Movile's development and launch of a smartphone app, PlayKids, which, as of the end of 2014, was the number-one children's app in the world (by sales in the Apple app store). The second aspect of this strategy involved investing in mobile-enabled offline start-ups in Brazil. The (A) case may be taught as a stand-alone case. The (B) case requires the (A) case to be read beforehand.
Authors :: George Foster, Peter Ziebelman, Jessica Morgan
Swot Analysis of "Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities" written by George Foster, Peter Ziebelman, Jessica Morgan includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Movile's Movile facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Growth strategy, Mobile, Operations management and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities casestudy better are - – increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is backlash against globalization, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Movile's Movile, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Movile's Movile 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Movile's Movile
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 Movile's Movile
Strengths Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Movile's Movile in Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities Harvard Business Review case study are -
Training and development
– Movile's Movile has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Movile's Movile 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
– Movile's Movile 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 Movile's Movile in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Movile's Movile in the sector have low bargaining power. Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Movile's Movile to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Movile's Movile
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Movile's Movile does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Movile's Movile 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Movile's Movile 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry
– Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Movile's Movile to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Movile's Movile to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Movile's Movile is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Movile's Movile is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Movile's Movile 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 Movile's Movile is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Movile's Movile has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Movile's Movile to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Movile's Movile 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Movile's Movile products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Movile's Movile needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Movile's Movile 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. Movile's Movile 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Movile's Movile 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 - Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Movile's Movile 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Movile's Movile is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment. Movile's Movile needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Movile's Movile to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities, is just above the industry average. Movile's Movile 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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 Movile's Movile 's lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities, 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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 Movile's Movile has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Movile's Movile is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities | 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Movile's Movile 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Movile's Movile can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Movile's Movile 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, Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Developing new processes and practices
– Movile's Movile 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.
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. Movile's Movile can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Movile's Movile 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Movile's Movile to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 Movile's Movile 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Movile's Movile 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Movile's Movile 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Movile's Movile to increase its market reach. Movile's Movile 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. Movile's Movile 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. Movile's Movile 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
– Movile's Movile 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, Movile's Movile can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Movile's Movile operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
Threats Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities are -
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.
Environmental challenges
– Movile's Movile 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. Movile's Movile can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Movile's Movile 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Movile's Movile 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Movile's Movile 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Movile's Movile is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Movile's Movile
– 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 Movile's Movile.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Movile's Movile has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Movile's Movile 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Movile's Movile 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Movile's Movile 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.
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. Movile's Movile 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.
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. Movile's Movile needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Movile's Movile with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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 Movile (B): Building New Venture Opportunities 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 Movile's Movile needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.