SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Spice Mobility Ltd (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Spice Mobility Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Spice Mobility Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Spice Mobility Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Spice Mobility Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Spice Mobility Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Spice Mobility Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Spice Mobility Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Communications Equipment sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Spice Mobility Ltd
Strengths of Spice Mobility Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Spice Mobility Ltd are -
Training and development
– Spice Mobility Ltd has one of the best training and development program in Technology 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Spice Mobility Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Communications Equipment sector.
Digital Transformation in Communications Equipment industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Spice Mobility Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Analytics focus
– Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Communications Equipment 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Spice Mobility Ltd is one of the leading players in the Communications Equipment 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Spice Mobility Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Spice Mobility Ltd staying ahead in the Communications Equipment industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Communications Equipment industry
– Spice Mobility Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Spice Mobility Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Communications Equipment industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Spice Mobility Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Spice Mobility Ltd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Communications Equipment industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Spice Mobility Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management in the Communications Equipment industry
– Spice Mobility Ltd is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Organizational Resilience of Spice Mobility Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Spice Mobility Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Spice Mobility Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Spice Mobility Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Spice Mobility Ltd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Spice Mobility Ltd 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 of Spice Mobility Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Spice Mobility Ltd are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Communications Equipment industry, Spice Mobility Ltd 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, Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Communications Equipment industry using digital technology.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Spice Mobility Ltd has high operating costs in the Communications Equipment industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Spice Mobility Ltd lucrative customers.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Spice Mobility Ltd has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Communications Equipment industry over the last five years. Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Spice Mobility Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Communications Equipment industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Spice Mobility Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of India, Spice Mobility Ltd needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Spice Mobility Ltd is one of the leading players in the Communications Equipment industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Communications Equipment industry in last five years.
Need for greater diversity
– Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Skills based hiring in Communications Equipment industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Spice Mobility Ltd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Communications Equipment industry, but Spice Mobility Ltd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Spice Mobility Ltd to focus more on services in the Communications Equipment industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Spice Mobility Ltd has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Communications Equipment industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Spice Mobility Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Spice Mobility Ltd are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Spice Mobility Ltd can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Spice Mobility Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Spice Mobility Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Communications Equipment industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Spice Mobility Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Communications Equipment 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Spice Mobility Ltd to increase its market reach. Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Communications Equipment industry.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Communications Equipment industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Spice Mobility Ltd 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. Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Spice Mobility Ltd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Spice Mobility Ltd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Communications Equipment industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Spice Mobility Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Communications Equipment industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It 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.
Threats Spice Mobility Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Spice Mobility Ltd are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Spice Mobility Ltd in Communications Equipment industry. The Communications Equipment 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Spice Mobility Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Communications Equipment industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Spice Mobility Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Communications Equipment 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Increasing wage structure of Spice Mobility Ltd
– 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 Spice Mobility Ltd.
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 Spice Mobility Ltd in the Communications Equipment sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Spice Mobility Ltd prominent markets.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Communications Equipment industry.
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 Spice Mobility Ltd.
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 Spice Mobility Ltd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Spice Mobility Ltd may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Communications Equipment sector.
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. Spice Mobility Ltd 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Communications Equipment industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Spice Mobility Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Spice Mobility Ltd 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 Spice Mobility Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.