Automating the Paris Subway (A) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Automating the Paris Subway (A)
In 2001, the head of the Paris Subway reflected on how to transform Line 1 into a driverless line without triggering a social conflict. After the shock of the 2000 Notre Dame de Lorette subway accident, in which a train derailed and caused 25 injuries in a Paris subway station, the state-owned Paris subway operator Regie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP) decided to adopt new security measures and considered the opportunity to automate the oldest and the busiest line of the network. The Head of the Paris Subway, Serge Lagrange, believed that automating Line 1 would improve security as well as performance. However, the automation would bring about the downsizing of 219 drivers' positions. Lagrange had to figure out how to get the RATP employees on board, particularly drivers and trade unions. How could he convince them of the necessity to automate Line 1? How could he prevent the potentially major social conflict that might result from downsizing the drivers' positions?
Authors :: Michel Anteby, Elena Corsi, Emilie Billaud
Swot Analysis of "Automating the Paris Subway (A)" written by Michel Anteby, Elena Corsi, Emilie Billaud includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Subway Paris facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Automating the Paris Subway (A) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Collaboration, Conflict, Ethics, Innovation, Labor, Marketing, Operations management, Technology and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Automating the Paris Subway (A) casestudy better are - – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
increasing energy prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Automating the Paris Subway (A)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Automating the Paris Subway (A) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Subway Paris, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Subway Paris 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Automating the Paris Subway (A) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Subway Paris
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Subway Paris
Strengths Automating the Paris Subway (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Subway Paris in Automating the Paris Subway (A) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Analytics focus
– Subway Paris 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 Michel Anteby, Elena Corsi, Emilie Billaud 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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.
Organizational Resilience of Subway Paris
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Subway Paris does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Subway Paris 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Subway Paris is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Automating the Paris Subway (A) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Subway Paris 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.
Training and development
– Subway Paris has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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.
Learning organization
- Subway Paris 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 Subway Paris is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Automating the Paris Subway (A) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Subway Paris in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Subway Paris 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Subway Paris is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Subway Paris in the sector have low bargaining power. Automating the Paris Subway (A) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Subway Paris to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses Automating the Paris Subway (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Automating the Paris Subway (A) are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Subway Paris, firm in the HBR case study Automating the Paris Subway (A) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Subway Paris has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High 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 Subway Paris supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Automating the Paris Subway (A), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Subway Paris vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Automating the Paris Subway (A) HBR case study mentions - Subway Paris 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Subway Paris 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Subway Paris is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Subway Paris needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Subway Paris to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Subway Paris 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, Subway Paris is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Automating the Paris Subway (A) can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Subway Paris is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Automating the Paris Subway (A), it seems that the employees of Subway Paris 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Subway Paris 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) | 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Subway Paris is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Subway Paris 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 Subway Paris to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Subway Paris 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.
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 Subway Paris in the consumer business. Now Subway Paris can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Subway Paris 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.
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 Subway Paris 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Subway Paris 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, Automating the Paris Subway (A), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Subway Paris can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Subway Paris can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Subway Paris 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 Subway Paris has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Subway Paris to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Automating the Paris Subway (A) case study. Subway Paris can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Subway Paris 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Subway Paris 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.
Threats Automating the Paris Subway (A) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Automating the Paris Subway (A) are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Subway Paris has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Subway Paris needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People 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.
Environmental challenges
– Subway Paris 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. Subway Paris can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Increasing wage structure of Subway Paris
– 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 Subway Paris.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Subway Paris 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.
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. Subway Paris needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Subway Paris.
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 Subway Paris business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Subway Paris can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Regulatory challenges
– Subway Paris 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 Leadership & Managing People 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. Subway Paris 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Subway Paris 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Automating the Paris Subway (A), Subway Paris may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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 Automating the Paris Subway (A) 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 Subway Paris needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.