The Peoples Operator (TPOP) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Communications Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for The Peoples Operator (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , The Peoples Operator is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is backlash against globalization,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of The Peoples Operator
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that The Peoples Operator can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the The Peoples Operator, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which The Peoples Operator 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 The Peoples Operator can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of The Peoples Operator
2. Improving business portfolio management of The Peoples Operator
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Communications Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of The Peoples Operator
Strengths of The Peoples Operator | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of The Peoples Operator are -
Digital Transformation in Communications Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For The Peoples Operator digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. The Peoples Operator has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Organizational Resilience of The Peoples Operator
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing The Peoples Operator does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– The Peoples Operator 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.
Innovation driven organization
– The Peoples Operator is one of the most innovative firm in Communications Services sector.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the The Peoples Operator 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– The Peoples Operator has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Communications Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of The Peoples Operator have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of The Peoples Operator comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Communications Services 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 The Peoples Operator 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
– The Peoples Operator has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. The Peoples Operator 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 Communications Services industry
– The Peoples Operator has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled The Peoples Operator to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Communications Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped The Peoples Operator to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– The Peoples Operator is one of the leading players in the Communications Services industry in United Kingdom. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United Kingdom. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Analytics focus
– The Peoples Operator 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 Communications Services industry. The technology infrastructure of United Kingdom 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.
Weaknesses of The Peoples Operator | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of The Peoples Operator are -
Skills based hiring in Communications Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at The Peoples Operator 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.
Need for greater diversity
– The Peoples Operator 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of The Peoples Operator is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Communications Services industry, but The Peoples Operator needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help The Peoples Operator to focus more on services in the Communications Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that The Peoples Operator needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Communications Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at The Peoples Operator can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as The Peoples Operator is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, The Peoples Operator needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of The Peoples Operator is just above the Communications Services 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.
High dependence on The Peoples Operator ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of The Peoples Operator still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Communications Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though The Peoples Operator has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though The Peoples Operator has some of the most successful models in the Communications Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. The Peoples Operator should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ less understanding of The Peoples Operator strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of The Peoples Operator 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, The Peoples Operator has high operating costs in the Communications Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract The Peoples Operator lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of The Peoples Operator, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Communications Services 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.
The Peoples Operator Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of The Peoples Operator are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for The Peoples Operator 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 The Peoples Operator to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. The Peoples Operator can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– The Peoples Operator has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Communications Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled The Peoples Operator to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help The Peoples Operator to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– The Peoples Operator 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, The Peoples Operator can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that The Peoples Operator operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Communications Services sector.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Communications Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. The Peoples Operator 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. The Peoples Operator 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.
Buying journey improvements
– The Peoples Operator can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Communications Services 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for The Peoples Operator 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Communications Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for The Peoples Operator in the Communications Services industry. Now The Peoples Operator can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for The Peoples Operator in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Communications Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help The Peoples Operator to increase its market reach. The Peoples Operator 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.
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 The Peoples Operator 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Communications Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. The Peoples Operator can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats The Peoples Operator External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of The Peoples Operator are -
Environmental challenges
– The Peoples Operator 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. The Peoples Operator can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Communications Services industry.
Regulatory challenges
– The Peoples Operator 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 Communications Services industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for The Peoples Operator in Communications Services industry. The Communications Services 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.
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 The Peoples Operator in the Communications Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– The Peoples Operator 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. The Peoples Operator needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Communications Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, The Peoples Operator 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 The Peoples Operator prominent markets.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, The Peoples Operator may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Communications Services sector.
Increasing wage structure of The Peoples Operator
– 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 The Peoples Operator.
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 The Peoples Operator business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, 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.
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 The Peoples Operator.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Communications Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. The Peoples Operator 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 The Peoples Operator Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at The Peoples Operator 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 The Peoples Operator 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 The Peoples Operator 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 The Peoples Operator 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 The Peoples Operator needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.