Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Downing Strategic Micro-Cap is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing transportation and logistics costs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, technology disruption, increasing energy prices,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Downing Strategic Micro-Cap can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Downing Strategic Micro-Cap, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap
2. Improving business portfolio management of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap
Strengths of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Organizational Resilience of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Downing Strategic Micro-Cap does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Downing Strategic Micro-Cap digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Downing Strategic Micro-Cap staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Downing Strategic Micro-Cap to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 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.
Ability to lead change in
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap is one of the leading players in the industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Downing Strategic Micro-Cap in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap are -
High dependence on Downing Strategic Micro-Cap ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Downing Strategic Micro-Cap has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Downing Strategic Micro-Cap to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap is just above the 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ less understanding of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 industry using digital technology.
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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Downing Strategic Micro-Cap vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Downing Strategic Micro-Cap Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 industry.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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. Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Downing Strategic Micro-Cap to increase its market reach. Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Downing Strategic Micro-Cap to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Downing Strategic Micro-Cap operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Manufacturing automation
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Downing Strategic Micro-Cap in industry. The 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. Downing Strategic Micro-Cap needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
Environmental challenges
– Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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. Downing Strategic Micro-Cap can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap prominent markets.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap
– 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 industry and other sectors.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Downing Strategic Micro-Cap Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap 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 Downing Strategic Micro-Cap needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.