Thomas Cook India (THOM) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Thomas Cook India (India)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Thomas Cook India is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Thomas Cook India

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Thomas Cook India can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Thomas Cook India, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Thomas Cook India 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Thomas Cook India can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Thomas Cook India
2. Improving business portfolio management of Thomas Cook India
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Personal Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Thomas Cook India

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Strengths of Thomas Cook India | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Thomas Cook India are -

Analytics focus

– Thomas Cook India 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 Personal Services industry. The technology infrastructure of India is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.

High brand equity

– Thomas Cook India has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Thomas Cook India to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Training and development

– Thomas Cook India has one of the best training and development program in Services industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.

Digital Transformation in Personal Services industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Thomas Cook India digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Thomas Cook India 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.

Diverse revenue streams

– Thomas Cook India is present in almost all the verticals within the Personal Services industry. This has provided Thomas Cook India 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.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Thomas Cook India 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.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Thomas Cook India has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Personal Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Thomas Cook India have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Thomas Cook India is one of the leading players in the Personal Services industry in India. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in India. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

Learning organization

- Thomas Cook India 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 Thomas Cook India is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Thomas Cook India emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Organizational Resilience of Thomas Cook India

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Thomas Cook India does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Innovation driven organization

– Thomas Cook India is one of the most innovative firm in Personal Services sector.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Thomas Cook India has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Thomas Cook India 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.

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Weaknesses of Thomas Cook India | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Thomas Cook India are -

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Thomas Cook India, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Personal Services industry. 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.

Employees’ less understanding of Thomas Cook India strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Thomas Cook India 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.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Thomas Cook India has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Personal Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

Lack of clear differentiation of Thomas Cook India products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Thomas Cook India needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Thomas Cook India has high operating costs in the Personal Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Thomas Cook India lucrative customers.

Need for greater diversity

– Thomas Cook India 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.

High dependence on Thomas Cook India ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Thomas Cook India still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Personal Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Thomas Cook India has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Personal Services industry, Thomas Cook India 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.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of India, Thomas Cook India needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Thomas Cook India has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Personal Services industry over the last five years. Thomas Cook India 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.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Thomas Cook India is one of the leading players in the Personal Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Personal Services industry in last five years.

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Thomas Cook India Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Thomas Cook India are -

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Personal Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Thomas Cook India 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. Thomas Cook India 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.

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 Thomas Cook India 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Thomas Cook India has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Thomas Cook India to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Thomas Cook India to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Thomas Cook India to increase its market reach. Thomas Cook India 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.

Loyalty marketing

– Thomas Cook India 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.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Thomas Cook India has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Personal Services industry. This can help Thomas Cook India to build a more holistic ecosystem for Thomas Cook India products in the Personal Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Thomas Cook India 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 Thomas Cook India to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Thomas Cook India 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 Personal Services industry.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Thomas Cook India can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Thomas Cook India operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Personal Services sector.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Thomas Cook India 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.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Thomas Cook India 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Thomas Cook India can develop new processes and procedures in Personal Services 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.

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. Thomas Cook India can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

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Threats Thomas Cook India External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Thomas Cook India are -

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. Thomas Cook India 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.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Thomas Cook India is facing in Personal Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Thomas Cook India may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Personal Services sector.

Backlash against dominant players

– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Thomas Cook India business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

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 Thomas Cook India.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Thomas Cook India 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 Personal Services industry.

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 Thomas Cook India in the Personal Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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. Thomas Cook India needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Personal Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Personal Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Thomas Cook India can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

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 Thomas Cook India in Personal Services industry. The Personal Services 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

– Thomas Cook India 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 Personal Services industry regulations.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Thomas Cook India has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Thomas Cook India needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal Services 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Thomas Cook India Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Thomas Cook India 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 Thomas Cook India 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 Thomas Cook India 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 Thomas Cook India 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 Thomas Cook India needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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