Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase
Between 2012 and 2015, Viom Networks Limited (Viom), India's largest independent telecommunications tower company, transformed its business from a position of near financial ruin to one of sustainable profitability. Viom's journey demonstrated how suitable initiatives, supported by relevant leadership, can bring about remarkable improvement in a company. When American Tower Corporation (the world's largest independent tower company) acquired a 51 per cent stake in Viom, it brought unexpected change. Further, the dynamism of the telecom industry presented challenges and opportunities that could bring about significant changes for the company into fiscal year 2016/17 and onwards. In its upcoming phases, Viom wanted to focus on predicting the next technological breakthrough and enabling growth ahead of the industry curve. How would Viom deal with these challenges? Atri Sengupta is affiliated with Indian Institute of Management Raipur. Yogesh Misra is affiliated with Thomas Assessments Pvt Ltd.
Swot Analysis of "Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase" written by Atri Sengupta, Yogesh Misra, Maninder Singh includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Viom Tower facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Leadership, Organizational culture and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Viom Tower, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Viom Tower 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 Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Viom Tower
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 Viom Tower
Strengths Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Viom Tower in Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase Harvard Business Review case study are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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.
Training and development
– Viom Tower has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Viom Tower to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Viom Tower to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Viom Tower
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Viom Tower does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Viom Tower 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Viom Tower is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Viom Tower 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 Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Viom Tower 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Viom Tower in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Viom Tower 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 Atri Sengupta, Yogesh Misra, Maninder Singh 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.
Learning organization
- Viom Tower 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 Viom Tower is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Viom Tower has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Viom Tower has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Weaknesses Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Viom Tower 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase HBR case study mentions - Viom Tower 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Viom Tower 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, Viom Tower is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Viom Tower 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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 Viom Tower has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Viom Tower 's lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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 Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Viom Tower is planning to shift buying processes online.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Viom Tower is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Viom Tower needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Viom Tower to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase, is just above the industry average. Viom Tower 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Opportunities Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase | 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 Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Viom Tower to increase its market reach. Viom Tower 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.
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 Viom Tower in the consumer business. Now Viom Tower can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Viom Tower 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Viom Tower 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.
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. Viom Tower 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. Viom Tower 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Viom Tower is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Viom Tower has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Viom Tower to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Viom Tower can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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 Viom Tower 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 Viom Tower to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Viom Tower 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.
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. Viom Tower can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Viom Tower in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Viom Tower can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Viom Tower operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Threats Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase are -
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 Viom Tower business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Viom Tower 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 Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase .
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Viom Tower 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.
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. Viom Tower needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Viom Tower 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Viom Tower 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase, Viom Tower 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 .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Viom Tower has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Viom Tower 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.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Viom Tower in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Viom Tower is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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. Viom Tower 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
– Viom Tower 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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 Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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 Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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 Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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 Viom Networks: Transformation and the Next Phase 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 Viom Tower needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
