SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Creative Peripherals (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Creative Peripherals is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Creative Peripherals
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Creative Peripherals can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Creative Peripherals, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Creative Peripherals 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 Creative Peripherals can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Creative Peripherals
2. Improving business portfolio management of Creative Peripherals
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Computer Hardware sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Creative Peripherals
Strengths of Creative Peripherals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Creative Peripherals are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Creative Peripherals in the Technology sector have low bargaining power. Creative Peripherals has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Creative Peripherals to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Creative Peripherals 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.
Learning organization
- Creative Peripherals 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 Creative Peripherals is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Creative Peripherals emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Computer Hardware industry
– Creative Peripherals is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Creative Peripherals 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 Computer Hardware 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Creative Peripherals in Computer Hardware industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Creative Peripherals
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Creative Peripherals does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Creative Peripherals comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Computer Hardware 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Creative Peripherals has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Creative Peripherals staying ahead in the Computer Hardware industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Creative Peripherals is present in almost all the verticals within the Computer Hardware industry. This has provided Creative Peripherals 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Computer Hardware industry
– Creative Peripherals has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Creative Peripherals to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Computer Hardware industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Creative Peripherals to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Creative Peripherals is one of the leading players in the Computer Hardware 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.
Weaknesses of Creative Peripherals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Creative Peripherals are -
Need for greater diversity
– Creative Peripherals 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, Creative Peripherals is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Creative Peripherals to provide better information regarding Computer Hardware products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Creative Peripherals needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Computer Hardware industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Creative Peripherals can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Creative Peripherals is planning to shift buying processes online.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Creative Peripherals, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Computer Hardware 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Creative Peripherals, in the dynamic environment of Computer Hardware industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Creative Peripherals has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Creative Peripherals 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 Computer Hardware industry using digital technology.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Creative Peripherals has high operating costs in the Computer Hardware industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Creative Peripherals lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Creative Peripherals is one of the leading players in the Computer Hardware industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Computer Hardware industry in last five years.
High dependence on Creative Peripherals ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Creative Peripherals still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Computer Hardware industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Creative Peripherals has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Computer Hardware industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Creative Peripherals 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 Computer Hardware industry.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Creative Peripherals has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Computer Hardware industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Creative Peripherals Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Creative Peripherals 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 Creative Peripherals 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Creative Peripherals 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 Creative Peripherals to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Creative Peripherals 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Computer Hardware industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Creative Peripherals can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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. Creative Peripherals can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Creative Peripherals has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Computer Hardware sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Creative Peripherals to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Creative Peripherals to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Creative Peripherals can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Computer Hardware 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
– Creative Peripherals 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Creative Peripherals can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Creative Peripherals has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Computer Hardware industry. This can help Creative Peripherals to build a more holistic ecosystem for Creative Peripherals products in the Computer Hardware industry by providing – 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, Creative Peripherals is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Creative Peripherals can utilize new technology in the field of Computer Hardware industry 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 in Computer Hardware industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Creative Peripherals in the Computer Hardware industry. Now Creative Peripherals can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Creative Peripherals can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Creative Peripherals operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Computer Hardware sector.
Threats Creative Peripherals External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Creative Peripherals are -
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.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Computer Hardware industry are lowering. It can presents Creative Peripherals with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Computer Hardware sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Creative Peripherals 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 Computer Hardware industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Creative Peripherals has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Computer Hardware industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Creative Peripherals needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Computer Hardware 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Creative Peripherals 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 Creative Peripherals prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Creative Peripherals 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Creative Peripherals is facing in Computer Hardware sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Computer Hardware industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Creative Peripherals can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Creative Peripherals 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Creative Peripherals 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 Computer Hardware industry and other sectors.
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 Creative Peripherals.
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 Creative Peripherals business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Creative Peripherals Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Creative Peripherals 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 Creative Peripherals 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 Creative Peripherals 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 Creative Peripherals 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 Creative Peripherals needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
