SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Multifiling Mitra (Indonesia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Multifiling Mitra is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Multifiling Mitra
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Multifiling Mitra can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Multifiling Mitra, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Multifiling Mitra 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 Multifiling Mitra can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Multifiling Mitra
2. Improving business portfolio management of Multifiling Mitra
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Indonesia
4. Making a Schools sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Multifiling Mitra
Strengths of Multifiling Mitra | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Multifiling Mitra are -
Innovation driven organization
– Multifiling Mitra is one of the most innovative firm in Schools sector.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Multifiling Mitra has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Schools industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Multifiling Mitra have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Multifiling Mitra 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 Multifiling Mitra is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Multifiling Mitra emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Multifiling Mitra 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 Schools industry. The technology infrastructure of Indonesia 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Multifiling Mitra has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Multifiling Mitra staying ahead in the Schools industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Multifiling Mitra is present in almost all the verticals within the Schools industry. This has provided Multifiling Mitra 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 Schools industry
– Multifiling Mitra has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Multifiling Mitra to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Schools industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Multifiling Mitra to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Training and development
– Multifiling Mitra 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Multifiling Mitra comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Schools 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Multifiling Mitra 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.
Organizational Resilience of Multifiling Mitra
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Multifiling Mitra does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management in the Schools industry
– Multifiling Mitra is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of Multifiling Mitra | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Multifiling Mitra are -
Need for greater diversity
– Multifiling Mitra 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, Multifiling Mitra has high operating costs in the Schools industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Multifiling Mitra lucrative customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Multifiling Mitra is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Schools industry, but Multifiling Mitra needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Multifiling Mitra to focus more on services in the Schools industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Schools industry, Multifiling Mitra 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Multifiling Mitra has some of the most successful models in the Schools industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Multifiling Mitra should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Lack of clear differentiation of Multifiling Mitra products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Multifiling Mitra needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in Schools industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Multifiling Mitra 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Multifiling Mitra strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Multifiling Mitra 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Multifiling Mitra is one of the leading players in the Schools industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Schools industry in last five years.
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 Multifiling Mitra supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Multifiling Mitra is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Multifiling Mitra vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High dependence on Multifiling Mitra ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Multifiling Mitra still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Schools industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Multifiling Mitra has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Multifiling Mitra Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Multifiling Mitra are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Multifiling Mitra 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 Multifiling Mitra to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Multifiling Mitra can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Schools 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Multifiling Mitra has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Schools sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Multifiling Mitra to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Multifiling Mitra to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Multifiling Mitra 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.
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 Multifiling Mitra 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Multifiling Mitra to increase its market reach. Multifiling Mitra 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Multifiling Mitra 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, Multifiling Mitra can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Multifiling Mitra operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Schools sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Multifiling Mitra 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 Multifiling Mitra 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
– Multifiling Mitra 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Multifiling Mitra 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 Schools industry.
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. Multifiling Mitra can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Manufacturing automation
– Multifiling Mitra can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Schools 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.
Threats Multifiling Mitra External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Multifiling Mitra are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Multifiling Mitra has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Schools industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Multifiling Mitra needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Schools 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Schools industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Multifiling Mitra can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Multifiling Mitra business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Multifiling Mitra 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 Schools industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Multifiling Mitra in Schools industry. The Schools 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.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Multifiling Mitra 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 Schools industry and other sectors.
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. Multifiling Mitra 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.
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 Multifiling Mitra.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Multifiling Mitra is facing in Schools sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Multifiling Mitra
– 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 Multifiling Mitra.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Multifiling Mitra may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Schools sector.
Environmental challenges
– Multifiling Mitra 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. Multifiling Mitra can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Schools industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Multifiling Mitra Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Multifiling Mitra 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 Multifiling Mitra 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 Multifiling Mitra 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 Multifiling Mitra 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 Multifiling Mitra needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.