SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Qualcomm Inc BDR (Brazil)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Qualcomm Inc BDR is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Qualcomm Inc BDR can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Qualcomm Inc BDR, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Qualcomm Inc BDR
2. Improving business portfolio management of Qualcomm Inc BDR
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Brazil
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Qualcomm Inc BDR
Strengths of Qualcomm Inc BDR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Qualcomm Inc BDR are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Qualcomm Inc BDR has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Qualcomm Inc BDR has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Qualcomm Inc BDR staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Qualcomm Inc BDR has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Qualcomm Inc BDR have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Qualcomm Inc BDR emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Qualcomm Inc BDR is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Qualcomm Inc BDR has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Qualcomm Inc BDR to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Qualcomm Inc BDR to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High brand equity
– Qualcomm Inc BDR has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Qualcomm Inc BDR to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Qualcomm Inc BDR in the sector have low bargaining power. Qualcomm Inc BDR has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Qualcomm Inc BDR to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Qualcomm Inc BDR does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Qualcomm Inc BDR is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Qualcomm Inc BDR in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Qualcomm Inc BDR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Qualcomm Inc BDR are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Qualcomm Inc BDR products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Qualcomm Inc BDR needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
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 Qualcomm Inc BDR supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Qualcomm Inc BDR is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Qualcomm Inc BDR vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Qualcomm Inc BDR has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Qualcomm Inc BDR should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Qualcomm Inc BDR is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Qualcomm Inc BDR to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Qualcomm Inc BDR has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High dependence on Qualcomm Inc BDR ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Qualcomm Inc BDR still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Qualcomm Inc BDR has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Qualcomm Inc BDR, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Qualcomm Inc BDR has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Qualcomm Inc BDR is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Qualcomm Inc BDR needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Qualcomm Inc BDR can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Qualcomm Inc BDR is planning to shift buying processes online.
Qualcomm Inc BDR Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Qualcomm Inc BDR are -
Buying journey improvements
– Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Qualcomm Inc BDR can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Qualcomm Inc BDR in the industry. Now Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Qualcomm Inc BDR is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Qualcomm Inc BDR can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, 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. Qualcomm Inc BDR can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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. Qualcomm Inc BDR 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. Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Qualcomm Inc BDR has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Qualcomm Inc BDR to build a more holistic ecosystem for Qualcomm Inc BDR products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Qualcomm Inc BDR External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Qualcomm Inc BDR are -
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
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 Qualcomm Inc BDR.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Qualcomm Inc BDR has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
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 Qualcomm Inc BDR business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Qualcomm Inc BDR needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– Qualcomm Inc BDR 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. Qualcomm Inc BDR can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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. Qualcomm Inc BDR can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Qualcomm Inc BDR 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.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Qualcomm Inc BDR
– 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Qualcomm Inc BDR Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR 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 Qualcomm Inc BDR needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.