SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Creative Eye Ltd (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Creative Eye Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Creative Eye Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Creative Eye Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Creative Eye 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 Creative Eye Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Creative Eye Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Creative Eye Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Motion Pictures sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Creative Eye Ltd
Strengths of Creative Eye Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Creative Eye Ltd are -
Strong track record of project management in the Motion Pictures industry
– Creative Eye 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Creative Eye Ltd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Motion Pictures industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Creative Eye Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Creative Eye Ltd 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.
Learning organization
- Creative Eye 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 Creative Eye Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Creative Eye Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Creative Eye Ltd 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Creative Eye Ltd comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Motion Pictures 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Creative Eye Ltd is present in almost all the verticals within the Motion Pictures industry. This has provided Creative Eye Ltd 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.
Analytics focus
– Creative Eye 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 Motion Pictures 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.
Organizational Resilience of Creative Eye Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Creative Eye Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Creative Eye Ltd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Creative Eye 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Creative Eye Ltd in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Creative Eye Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Creative Eye Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Creative Eye Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Motion Pictures sector.
Weaknesses of Creative Eye Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Creative Eye Ltd are -
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 Creative Eye Ltd supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Creative Eye Ltd is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Creative Eye Ltd vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Employees’ less understanding of Creative Eye Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Creative Eye Ltd 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Motion Pictures industry, Creative Eye 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Creative Eye Ltd is just above the Motion Pictures 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Creative Eye Ltd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Creative Eye Ltd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Creative Eye Ltd has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Motion Pictures industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of India, Creative Eye Ltd needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Creative Eye 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Motion Pictures industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Creative Eye Ltd 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 Motion Pictures industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Creative Eye 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 Motion Pictures industry using digital technology.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Creative Eye Ltd has some of the most successful models in the Motion Pictures industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Creative Eye Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Creative Eye Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Creative Eye Ltd are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Creative Eye Ltd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Motion Pictures industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Creative Eye Ltd in the Motion Pictures industry. Now Creative Eye Ltd can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Creative Eye 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Creative Eye 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 Motion Pictures industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Creative Eye Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Motion Pictures industry. This can help Creative Eye Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Creative Eye Ltd products in the Motion Pictures industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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, Creative Eye Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Creative Eye Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Motion Pictures sector.
Loyalty marketing
– Creative Eye 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.
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 Eye Ltd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Creative Eye Ltd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Motion Pictures sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Creative Eye Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Creative Eye Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Motion Pictures industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Creative Eye Ltd can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Creative Eye 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 Motion Pictures industry.
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 Eye 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Creative Eye Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Motion Pictures 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.
Threats Creative Eye Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Creative Eye Ltd are -
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 Eye Ltd.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Creative Eye 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 Motion Pictures industry.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Motion Pictures industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Creative Eye Ltd can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Creative Eye 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 Creative Eye 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 Creative Eye Ltd in the Motion Pictures sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Creative Eye Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Motion Pictures industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Creative Eye Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Motion Pictures 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
– Creative Eye 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.
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 Eye 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Creative Eye Ltd in Motion Pictures industry. The Motion Pictures 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.
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. Creative Eye Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Motion Pictures industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Creative Eye Ltd 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. Creative Eye Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Motion Pictures industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Motion Pictures industry are lowering. It can presents Creative Eye Ltd with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Motion Pictures sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Creative Eye Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Creative Eye 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 Creative Eye 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 Creative Eye 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 Creative Eye 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 Creative Eye Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.