SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Vulcabras Azaleia (Brazil)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Vulcabras Azaleia is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, technology disruption, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, wage bills are increasing, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Vulcabras Azaleia
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Vulcabras Azaleia can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Vulcabras Azaleia, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Vulcabras Azaleia 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 Vulcabras Azaleia can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Vulcabras Azaleia
2. Improving business portfolio management of Vulcabras Azaleia
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Brazil
4. Making a Footwear sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Vulcabras Azaleia
Strengths of Vulcabras Azaleia | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Vulcabras Azaleia are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Vulcabras Azaleia has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Vulcabras Azaleia staying ahead in the Footwear industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Digital Transformation in Footwear industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Vulcabras Azaleia digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Footwear industry
– Vulcabras Azaleia has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Vulcabras Azaleia to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Footwear industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Vulcabras Azaleia to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Vulcabras Azaleia has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Vulcabras Azaleia comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Footwear 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 Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Footwear industry
– Vulcabras Azaleia is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Vulcabras Azaleia has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Vulcabras Azaleia to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Vulcabras Azaleia is present in almost all the verticals within the Footwear industry. This has provided Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Vulcabras Azaleia is one of the leading players in the Footwear industry in Brazil. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Brazil. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Ability to lead change in Footwear
– Vulcabras Azaleia is one of the leading players in the Footwear industry in Brazil. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Footwear industry in Brazil but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Vulcabras Azaleia in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Vulcabras Azaleia has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Footwear industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Vulcabras Azaleia have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Vulcabras Azaleia | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Vulcabras Azaleia are -
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Vulcabras Azaleia, in the dynamic environment of Footwear industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Vulcabras Azaleia has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Brazil, Vulcabras Azaleia needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Vulcabras Azaleia has some of the most successful models in the Footwear industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Vulcabras Azaleia should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Vulcabras Azaleia has high operating costs in the Footwear industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Vulcabras Azaleia lucrative customers.
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 Vulcabras Azaleia supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Vulcabras Azaleia is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Vulcabras Azaleia vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Vulcabras Azaleia has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Footwear industry over the last five years. Vulcabras Azaleia 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 Vulcabras Azaleia, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Footwear 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 dependence on Vulcabras Azaleia ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Vulcabras Azaleia still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Footwear industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Vulcabras Azaleia has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Vulcabras Azaleia needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Footwear industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Vulcabras Azaleia can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Vulcabras Azaleia is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Footwear industry, Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Vulcabras Azaleia has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Vulcabras Azaleia Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Vulcabras Azaleia are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Vulcabras Azaleia has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Footwear industry. This can help Vulcabras Azaleia to build a more holistic ecosystem for Vulcabras Azaleia products in the Footwear industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Vulcabras Azaleia can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Footwear 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Vulcabras Azaleia in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Footwear industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Vulcabras Azaleia is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Vulcabras Azaleia can utilize new technology in the field of Footwear industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Vulcabras Azaleia has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Footwear sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Vulcabras Azaleia to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Vulcabras Azaleia to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Developing new processes and practices
– Vulcabras Azaleia can develop new processes and procedures in Footwear industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Footwear industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Vulcabras Azaleia 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. Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Vulcabras Azaleia to increase its market reach. Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Vulcabras Azaleia 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 Vulcabras Azaleia to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Footwear industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Vulcabras Azaleia in the Footwear industry. Now Vulcabras Azaleia can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Threats Vulcabras Azaleia External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Vulcabras Azaleia are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Vulcabras Azaleia in Footwear industry. The Footwear 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Vulcabras Azaleia 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 Footwear industry regulations.
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. Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
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 Vulcabras Azaleia in the Footwear sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Footwear industry are lowering. It can presents Vulcabras Azaleia with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Footwear sector.
Increasing wage structure of Vulcabras Azaleia
– 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 Vulcabras Azaleia.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Vulcabras Azaleia may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Footwear sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Vulcabras Azaleia 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Vulcabras Azaleia is facing in Footwear sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Vulcabras Azaleia has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Footwear industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Vulcabras Azaleia needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Footwear 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.
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 Vulcabras Azaleia.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Vulcabras Azaleia Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Vulcabras Azaleia 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 Vulcabras Azaleia 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 Vulcabras Azaleia 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 Vulcabras Azaleia 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 Vulcabras Azaleia needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
