Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds
The Maddie's Fund case study focuses on the organization's collaborative philosophy and its system-level strategy of creating greater cohesiveness in the animal rescue movement that was fractured and had a history of "trashing and bashing." Unlike many other foundations, the Maddie's Fund has tried to create networks and collaboration across the animal welfare field as a whole with the goal of achieving a "no-kill nation" for American's companion animals (dogs and cats). The case protagonist is Rich Avanzino, largely regarded as the father of the no-kill movement and the case ends with him leaving the organization and the future of Maddie's Fund.
Swot Analysis of "Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds" written by Jane Wei-Skillern includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Maddie's Kill facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Competitive strategy, Networking, Social enterprise, Technology and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds casestudy better are - – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing energy prices, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions,
wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Maddie's Kill, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Maddie's Kill 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 Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Maddie's Kill
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 Maddie's Kill
Strengths Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Maddie's Kill in Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Maddie's Kill is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Maddie's Kill in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Maddie's Kill in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Maddie's Kill is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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.
Learning organization
- Maddie's Kill 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 Maddie's Kill is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Maddie's Kill 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 Jane Wei-Skillern 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Maddie's Kill is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Maddie's Kill in the sector have low bargaining power. Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Maddie's Kill to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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 Maddie's Kill
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Maddie's Kill does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management
– Maddie's Kill is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Maddie's Kill 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Maddie's Kill 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 Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds - 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 Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Maddie's Kill 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 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 Maddie's Kill supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Maddie's Kill vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Maddie's Kill 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Maddie's Kill 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. Maddie's Kill 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds, it seems that the employees of Maddie's Kill 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Maddie's Kill is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Maddie's Kill, firm in the HBR case study Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Jane Wei-Skillern suggests that, Maddie's Kill 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds, 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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 Maddie's Kill has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Maddie's Kill 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.
Opportunities Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds | 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 Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds are -
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 Maddie's Kill 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 Maddie's Kill to increase its market reach. Maddie's Kill 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Maddie's Kill 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Maddie's Kill 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Maddie's Kill can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Maddie's Kill has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Maddie's Kill to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds case study. Maddie's Kill can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Maddie's Kill is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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.
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 Maddie's Kill in the consumer business. Now Maddie's Kill can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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. Maddie's Kill can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Maddie's Kill can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Maddie's Kill operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Developing new processes and practices
– Maddie's Kill 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.
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. Maddie's Kill 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. Maddie's Kill 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Maddie's Kill 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.
Threats Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Maddie's Kill 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. Maddie's Kill 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.
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 Maddie's Kill.
Increasing wage structure of Maddie's Kill
– 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 Maddie's Kill.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Maddie's Kill 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 Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds .
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 Maddie's Kill business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Maddie's Kill is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Maddie's Kill needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds, Maddie's Kill 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 .
Consumer confidence and its impact on Maddie's Kill 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Maddie's Kill 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 Maddie's Kill with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Maddie's Kill 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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 Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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 Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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 Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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 Maddie's Fund: Building Community and Collaboration Against All Odds 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 Maddie's Kill needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
