The Eyewitness Surveillance case tells the story of Rush Arnold and RT McCloy, friends who met while studying at Wharton, who raise a search fund under the name Channelstone Partners. In the fall of 2010, after having spent two-thirds of their search fund capital and reviewed over 200 companies, they came across Eyewitness Surveillance, a company specializing in the use of video technology to protect the assets of car dealerships. Eyewitness' cofounder, Vince Redland, was interested in selling the company to pursue other interests and Arnold and McCloy found the industry, company, and deal all compelling. Over the course of the next two months, they engaged in a due diligence process which further validated their interest in the company, but also raised several red flags. Among the issues highlighted in due diligence included widespread employee disgruntlement, particularly with Vince (who was also the top sales person), a reluctance to share detailed financial information, and an 11th hour disagreement about a contract clause stipulating that the purchase price would go down if monthly revenues declined after the close. Despite having conducted a thorough and in-depth due diligence process, Arnold and McCloy were at the end of their search capital and facing a deal that was on the brink. They were now faced with the question of whether or not they wanted to charge ahead, despite the red flags, or walk away, knowing that this could potentially be the end of the road.
Swot Analysis of "Eyewitness Surveillance" written by David Dodson includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Eyewitness Mccloy facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Eyewitness Surveillance case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Eyewitness Surveillance casestudy better are - – geopolitical disruptions, increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, 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%,
wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Eyewitness Surveillance
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Eyewitness Surveillance case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Eyewitness Mccloy, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Eyewitness Mccloy 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 Eyewitness Surveillance can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Eyewitness Surveillance case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Eyewitness Mccloy
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 Eyewitness Mccloy
Strengths Eyewitness Surveillance | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Eyewitness Mccloy in Eyewitness Surveillance Harvard Business Review case study are -
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Eyewitness Mccloy digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Analytics focus
– Eyewitness Mccloy 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 David Dodson 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Eyewitness Mccloy 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 Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Training and development
– Eyewitness Mccloy has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Eyewitness Surveillance 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Eyewitness Mccloy in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Eyewitness Mccloy 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 Eyewitness Mccloy is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Eyewitness Surveillance Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Eyewitness Mccloy is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Eyewitness Surveillance 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Eyewitness Mccloy is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Eyewitness Surveillance Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Eyewitness Surveillance 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 Eyewitness Mccloy
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Eyewitness Mccloy does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Eyewitness Surveillance | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Eyewitness Surveillance are -
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 Eyewitness Mccloy supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Eyewitness Surveillance, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Eyewitness Mccloy vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Eyewitness Surveillance, 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Eyewitness Mccloy 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 - Eyewitness Surveillance should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Eyewitness Surveillance 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 Eyewitness Mccloy has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Eyewitness Surveillance, it seems that the employees of Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Eyewitness Mccloy, firm in the HBR case study Eyewitness Surveillance needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Eyewitness Surveillance 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 Eyewitness Mccloy 's lucrative customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, David Dodson suggests that, Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Opportunities Eyewitness Surveillance | 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 Eyewitness Surveillance are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Eyewitness Mccloy 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, Eyewitness Surveillance, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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. Eyewitness Mccloy can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Eyewitness Mccloy can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Eyewitness Surveillance suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Loyalty marketing
– Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
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 Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Eyewitness Mccloy to increase its market reach. Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Eyewitness Mccloy 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 Eyewitness Surveillance - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Eyewitness Mccloy to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
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 Eyewitness Mccloy in the consumer business. Now Eyewitness Mccloy can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Eyewitness Mccloy can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Eyewitness Mccloy can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Eyewitness Mccloy operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Threats Eyewitness Surveillance External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Eyewitness Surveillance are -
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. Eyewitness Mccloy needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
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 Eyewitness Mccloy in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Eyewitness Mccloy 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 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Eyewitness Mccloy 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 Eyewitness Mccloy
– 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 Eyewitness Mccloy.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Eyewitness Mccloy is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Eyewitness Mccloy business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
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. Eyewitness Mccloy can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Eyewitness Mccloy has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Eyewitness Mccloy 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Eyewitness Surveillance 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 Eyewitness Surveillance 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 Eyewitness Surveillance 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 Eyewitness Surveillance 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 Eyewitness Surveillance 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 Eyewitness Mccloy needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.