Swot Analysis of "Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C)" written by Stewart Thornhill, Chris Sturby includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Clodhoppers Krave's facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurial finance, Growth strategy and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) casestudy better are - – geopolitical disruptions, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Clodhoppers Krave's, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Clodhoppers Krave's 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Clodhoppers Krave's
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Clodhoppers Krave's
Strengths Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Clodhoppers Krave's in Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Clodhoppers Krave's in the sector have low bargaining power. Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Clodhoppers Krave's to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Clodhoppers Krave's is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Strong track record of project management
– Clodhoppers Krave's is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Clodhoppers Krave's 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Clodhoppers Krave's in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High brand equity
– Clodhoppers Krave's has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Clodhoppers Krave's to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Clodhoppers Krave's 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 Clodhoppers Krave's is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Clodhoppers Krave's has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) 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.
Digital Transformation in Finance & Accounting segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Clodhoppers Krave's digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Clodhoppers Krave's has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Clodhoppers Krave's 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C), is just above the industry average. Clodhoppers Krave's 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, Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Clodhoppers Krave's 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 - Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C), in the dynamic environment Clodhoppers Krave's has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Clodhoppers Krave's has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Stewart Thornhill, Chris Sturby suggests that, Clodhoppers Krave's is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) 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 Clodhoppers Krave's has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Clodhoppers Krave's 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. Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C), it seems that the employees of Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Clodhoppers Krave's, firm in the HBR case study Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) | 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Clodhoppers Krave's 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 Clodhoppers Krave's to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Finance & Accounting industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Clodhoppers Krave's 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. Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Clodhoppers Krave's to increase its market reach. Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Clodhoppers Krave's 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 Finance & Accounting segment.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Clodhoppers Krave's can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Clodhoppers Krave's operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Finance & Accounting sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Clodhoppers Krave's 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, Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Clodhoppers Krave's has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Clodhoppers Krave's to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) case study. Clodhoppers Krave's can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Clodhoppers Krave's can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Clodhoppers Krave's in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Finance & Accounting segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Clodhoppers Krave's can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Finance & Accounting 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Threats Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C), Clodhoppers Krave's may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Finance & Accounting .
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Clodhoppers Krave's 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) .
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Finance & Accounting field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Clodhoppers Krave's can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Clodhoppers Krave's is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Clodhoppers Krave's
– 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 Clodhoppers Krave's.
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 Clodhoppers Krave's.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Clodhoppers Krave's in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Clodhoppers Krave's has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Finance & Accounting industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Clodhoppers Krave's needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Finance & Accounting 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.
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
– Clodhoppers Krave's 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.
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 Clodhoppers Krave's business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) 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 Krave's Candy Co.--Clodhoppers (C) 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 Clodhoppers Krave's needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
