Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water
Seeking to move beyond chip-making and offer sophisticated IT solutions in the form of software and hardware platforms, Intel Corporation, a leading semiconductor manufacturer in the United States, introduces a pilot project in India for testing a new platform that allows for monitoring and demand management along water distribution networks. The case describes, in detail, internal events that led to the creation of this pilot. It examines details of the water market relevant in Intel's decision to move the pilot forward.
Authors :: Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson, George Serafeim, Sarah E. Farrell
Swot Analysis of "Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water" written by Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson, George Serafeim, Sarah E. Farrell includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Pilot Water facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, IT, Social responsibility, Sustainability and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pilot Water, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pilot Water 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 Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pilot Water
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 Pilot Water
Strengths Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pilot Water in Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water Harvard Business Review case study are -
Innovation driven organization
– Pilot Water is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Pilot Water 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry
– Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Pilot Water to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Pilot Water to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Pilot Water in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Pilot Water 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Pilot Water in the sector have low bargaining power. Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Pilot Water to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management
– Pilot Water is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Organizational Resilience of Pilot Water
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Pilot Water does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Pilot Water 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 Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Pilot Water 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 Pilot Water is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Pilot Water is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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
– Pilot Water has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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.
Weaknesses Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water, is just above the industry average. Pilot Water 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Pilot Water 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Pilot Water has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
High dependence on 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 Pilot Water supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Pilot Water vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Pilot Water is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Pilot Water 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 - Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Pilot Water 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Pilot Water, firm in the HBR case study Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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 Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Pilot Water is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Pilot Water 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Pilot Water 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.
Opportunities Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water | 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 Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water are -
Manufacturing automation
– Pilot Water 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.
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. Pilot Water can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Pilot Water to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Pilot Water to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Pilot Water 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Pilot Water has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Pilot Water to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water case study. Pilot Water can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Pilot Water can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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
– Pilot Water 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Pilot Water 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, Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water, 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, Pilot Water is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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.
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. Pilot Water 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. Pilot Water 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Pilot Water can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Pilot Water can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Pilot Water operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
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 Pilot Water in the consumer business. Now Pilot Water can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water are -
Environmental challenges
– Pilot Water 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. Pilot Water can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry.
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 Pilot Water business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Pilot Water needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
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. Pilot Water can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Pilot Water 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
– Pilot Water 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Pilot Water is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Pilot Water 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 Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water .
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Pilot Water 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Pilot Water with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Pilot Water 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Pilot Water has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Pilot Water 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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 Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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 Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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 Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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 Intel: Exploring Market Opportunities in Water 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 Pilot Water needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
