To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm
It was the summer of 2015 when the son of a family-owned real estate business in Vancouver was struck by love and decided to follow his heart to India. However, leaving his family's business was easier said than done. The family had no formal documents that provided members with an exit strategy or remuneration. There were no wills or financial plans, and whatever money was available to finance a move abroad was tied up in the family business, which was operating at a loss. At stake was the pending sale of a commercial property that could inject nearly $3 million into the family's coffers. Before leaving, which short- and long-term issues needed to be addressed to ensure the business and the family estate were prepared for the future? How should the family move forward when faced with the realization that the children might not be interested in taking over the business? Vanessa M. Strike is affiliated with University of British Columbia.
Swot Analysis of "To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm" written by Vanessa M. Strike, Aly Alidina includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Family Love facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm casestudy better are - – increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Family Love, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Family Love 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 To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Family Love
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 Family Love
Strengths To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Family Love in To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm Harvard Business Review case study are -
Innovation driven organization
– Family Love is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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 Family Love 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Family Love is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management
– Family Love 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
- Family Love 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 Family Love is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Family Love 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 To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Family Love in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Family Love in the sector have low bargaining power. To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Family Love to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Family Love has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Family Love to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Family Love 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 Vanessa M. Strike, Aly Alidina 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.
Organizational Resilience of Family Love
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Family Love does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Family Love needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
High 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 Family Love supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Family Love vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Family Love 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Family Love, firm in the HBR case study To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Family Love products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Family Love needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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 Family Love has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Family Love 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Family Love is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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 To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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 To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Family Love is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Family Love 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm, is just above the industry average. Family Love 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.
Opportunities To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm | 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 To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Family Love 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, To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm, 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, Family Love is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Family Love can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Family Love 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Family Love can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Family Love can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Family Love can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Family Love 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 Family Love to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Family Love 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Family Love can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Family Love operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Family Love can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Family Love 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 Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Family Love 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. Family Love 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.
Threats To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm, Family Love 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 .
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. Family Love can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Family Love demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of Family Love
– 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 Family Love.
Regulatory challenges
– Family Love 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.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Family Love has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Family Love 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Family Love in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People 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 Family Love with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Family Love business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Family Love 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.
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. Family Love 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. Family Love needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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 To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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 To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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 To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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 To Mumbai with Love: Exiting the Family Firm 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 Family Love needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
