SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Geekay Wires (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Geekay Wires is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is backlash against globalization,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , technology disruption, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Geekay Wires can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Geekay Wires, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Geekay Wires 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 Geekay Wires can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Geekay Wires
2. Improving business portfolio management of Geekay Wires
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Geekay Wires
Strengths of Geekay Wires | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Geekay Wires are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Geekay Wires in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Geekay Wires has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Geekay Wires to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Geekay Wires 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Geekay Wires has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Geekay Wires 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.
Analytics focus
– Geekay Wires 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 Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures 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.
Learning organization
- Geekay Wires 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 Geekay Wires is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Geekay Wires emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Geekay Wires is present in almost all the verticals within the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry. This has provided Geekay Wires 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Geekay Wires is one of the most innovative firm in Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures sector.
High brand equity
– Geekay Wires has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Geekay Wires to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Geekay Wires has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Geekay Wires staying ahead in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Geekay Wires
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Geekay Wires does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Geekay Wires has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Geekay Wires have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Geekay Wires comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Constr. - Supplies & 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.
Weaknesses of Geekay Wires | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Geekay Wires are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Geekay Wires has some of the most successful models in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Geekay Wires should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Geekay Wires has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry over the last five years. Geekay Wires even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Employees’ less understanding of Geekay Wires strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Geekay Wires 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of India, Geekay Wires needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Geekay Wires 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 Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry using digital technology.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Geekay Wires is one of the leading players in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry in last five years.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Geekay Wires has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Constr. - Supplies & 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Geekay Wires is just above the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Geekay Wires has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Need for greater diversity
– Geekay Wires 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Geekay Wires has high operating costs in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Geekay Wires lucrative customers.
Geekay Wires Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Geekay Wires are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Geekay Wires can develop new processes and procedures in Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Geekay Wires 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Geekay Wires can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Buying journey improvements
– Geekay Wires can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Constr. - Supplies & 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Geekay Wires is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Geekay Wires can utilize new technology in the field of Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Geekay Wires 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Geekay Wires can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Geekay Wires has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Geekay Wires to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Geekay Wires to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Geekay Wires can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Geekay Wires 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 Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Geekay Wires 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 Geekay Wires to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Geekay Wires in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry. Now Geekay Wires can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Geekay Wires has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry. This can help Geekay Wires to build a more holistic ecosystem for Geekay Wires products in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Geekay Wires External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Geekay Wires are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Geekay Wires 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 Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry are lowering. It can presents Geekay Wires with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Geekay Wires 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.
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. Geekay Wires needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Geekay Wires 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.
Increasing wage structure of Geekay Wires
– 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 Geekay Wires.
Regulatory challenges
– Geekay Wires 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 Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Geekay Wires is facing in Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures 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, Geekay Wires may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures sector.
Environmental challenges
– Geekay Wires 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. Geekay Wires can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures industry.
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. Geekay Wires 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.
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 Geekay Wires in the Constr. - Supplies & Fixtures sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Geekay Wires Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Geekay Wires 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 Geekay Wires 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 Geekay Wires 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 Geekay Wires 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 Geekay Wires needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.