Pil Italica Lifestyle (PILI) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Furniture & Fixtures
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Pil Italica Lifestyle (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Pil Italica Lifestyle is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Pil Italica Lifestyle
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Pil Italica Lifestyle can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pil Italica Lifestyle, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pil Italica Lifestyle 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 Pil Italica Lifestyle can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Pil Italica Lifestyle
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pil Italica Lifestyle
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Furniture & Fixtures sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Pil Italica Lifestyle
Strengths of Pil Italica Lifestyle | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pil Italica Lifestyle are -
High brand equity
– Pil Italica Lifestyle has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Pil Italica Lifestyle to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Pil Italica Lifestyle comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Furniture & Fixtures 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Furniture & Fixtures industry
– Pil Italica Lifestyle is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Pil Italica Lifestyle has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Furniture & Fixtures industry
– Pil Italica Lifestyle has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Pil Italica Lifestyle to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Furniture & Fixtures industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Pil Italica Lifestyle to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Pil Italica Lifestyle in Furniture & Fixtures industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Pil Italica Lifestyle has one of the best training and development program in Consumer Cyclical 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Pil Italica Lifestyle has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Pil Italica Lifestyle staying ahead in the Furniture & Fixtures industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Pil Italica Lifestyle is present in almost all the verticals within the Furniture & Fixtures industry. This has provided Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
Organizational Resilience of Pil Italica Lifestyle
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Pil Italica Lifestyle does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Pil Italica Lifestyle 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 Pil Italica Lifestyle is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Pil Italica Lifestyle emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Pil Italica Lifestyle | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Pil Italica Lifestyle are -
High dependence on Pil Italica Lifestyle ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Pil Italica Lifestyle still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Furniture & Fixtures industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Pil Italica Lifestyle has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Pil Italica Lifestyle, in the dynamic environment of Furniture & Fixtures industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Pil Italica Lifestyle has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Pil Italica Lifestyle needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Furniture & Fixtures industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Pil Italica Lifestyle can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Pil Italica Lifestyle is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ less understanding of Pil Italica Lifestyle strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Pil Italica Lifestyle 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
Pil Italica Lifestyle has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Furniture & Fixtures industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
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 Pil Italica Lifestyle supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Pil Italica Lifestyle is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Pil Italica Lifestyle vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Pil Italica Lifestyle is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Pil Italica Lifestyle to provide better information regarding Furniture & Fixtures products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Pil Italica Lifestyle, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Furniture & Fixtures 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.
Skills based hiring in Furniture & Fixtures industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Pil Italica Lifestyle has some of the most successful models in the Furniture & Fixtures industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Pil Italica Lifestyle should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Pil Italica Lifestyle Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Pil Italica Lifestyle are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Pil Italica Lifestyle in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Furniture & Fixtures industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Pil Italica Lifestyle has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Furniture & Fixtures industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Pil Italica Lifestyle 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. Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Furniture & Fixtures industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Pil Italica Lifestyle in the Furniture & Fixtures industry. Now Pil Italica Lifestyle can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Pil Italica Lifestyle has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Furniture & Fixtures sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Pil Italica Lifestyle to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Pil Italica Lifestyle to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Pil Italica Lifestyle can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Furniture & Fixtures 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Pil Italica Lifestyle can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Pil Italica Lifestyle operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Furniture & Fixtures sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Pil Italica Lifestyle can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Pil Italica Lifestyle can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Furniture & Fixtures sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Pil Italica Lifestyle 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 Pil Italica Lifestyle to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Pil Italica Lifestyle 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 Pil Italica Lifestyle to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Threats Pil Italica Lifestyle External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Pil Italica Lifestyle are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Pil Italica Lifestyle is facing in Furniture & Fixtures sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Pil Italica Lifestyle needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Pil Italica Lifestyle can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Furniture & Fixtures industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Pil Italica Lifestyle has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Furniture & Fixtures industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Pil Italica Lifestyle needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Furniture & Fixtures 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.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Pil Italica Lifestyle in Furniture & Fixtures industry. The Furniture & Fixtures 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.
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. Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Pil Italica Lifestyle 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 Furniture & Fixtures industry.
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. Pil Italica Lifestyle needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Furniture & Fixtures industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Pil Italica Lifestyle.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Pil Italica Lifestyle 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.
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 Pil Italica Lifestyle business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Furniture & Fixtures industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Pil Italica Lifestyle can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Pil Italica Lifestyle Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Pil Italica Lifestyle 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 Pil Italica Lifestyle 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 Pil Italica Lifestyle 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 Pil Italica Lifestyle 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 Pil Italica Lifestyle needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
