Marco (MRHB) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Office Equipment
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Marco (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Marco is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is backlash against globalization, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, technology disruption, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Marco can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Marco, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Marco 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 Marco can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Marco
2. Improving business portfolio management of Marco
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Office Equipment sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Marco
Strengths of Marco | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Marco are -
Training and development
– Marco has one of the best training and development program in Technology 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Marco is present in almost all the verticals within the Office Equipment industry. This has provided Marco 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Marco is one of the most innovative firm in Office Equipment sector.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Marco has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Marco 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.
Ability to lead change in Office Equipment
– Marco is one of the leading players in the Office Equipment industry in Malaysia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Office Equipment industry in Malaysia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Marco in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Marco
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Marco does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Marco has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Marco to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Marco in Office Equipment industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Marco 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Marco is one of the leading players in the Office Equipment industry in Malaysia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Malaysia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management in the Office Equipment industry
– Marco is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Marco in the Technology sector have low bargaining power. Marco has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Marco to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Marco | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Marco are -
High dependence on Marco ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Marco still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Office Equipment industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Marco has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Malaysia, Marco needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Marco has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Office Equipment industry over the last five years. Marco even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Marco, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Office Equipment 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Marco has high operating costs in the Office Equipment industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Marco lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Marco, in the dynamic environment of Office Equipment industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Marco has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Skills based hiring in Office Equipment industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Marco 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Marco products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Marco needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Marco is one of the leading players in the Office Equipment industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Office Equipment 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 Marco supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Marco is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Marco vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Marco is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Marco to provide better information regarding Office Equipment products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Marco Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Marco are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Marco is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Marco can utilize new technology in the field of Office Equipment 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. Marco can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Marco 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 Marco to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Marco 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 Marco to increase its market reach. Marco 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Marco in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Office Equipment industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Marco 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Marco 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Marco 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 Marco to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Marco 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Office Equipment industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Marco 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. Marco 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Marco 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 Office Equipment industry.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Marco has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Office Equipment industry. This can help Marco to build a more holistic ecosystem for Marco products in the Office Equipment industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Marco External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Marco are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Marco may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Office Equipment sector.
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. Marco needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Office Equipment industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Marco 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 Office Equipment industry.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
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. Marco 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Office Equipment industry are lowering. It can presents Marco with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Office Equipment sector.
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.
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 Marco in the Office Equipment sector and impact the bottomline 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 Marco.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Marco is facing in Office Equipment sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Marco 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. Marco can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Office Equipment industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Marco 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 Marco prominent markets.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Office Equipment industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Marco 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 Marco Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Marco 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 Marco 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 Marco 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 Marco 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 Marco needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.