SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for FII RD ESCRI (Brazil)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , FII RD ESCRI is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that FII RD ESCRI can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the FII RD ESCRI, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of FII RD ESCRI
2. Improving business portfolio management of FII RD ESCRI
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 FII RD ESCRI
Strengths of FII RD ESCRI | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of FII RD ESCRI are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– FII RD ESCRI has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. FII RD ESCRI 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.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For FII RD ESCRI digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. FII RD ESCRI 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– FII RD ESCRI has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – FII RD ESCRI staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– FII RD ESCRI has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled FII RD ESCRI to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped FII RD ESCRI to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– FII RD ESCRI is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided FII RD ESCRI 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– FII RD ESCRI has one of the best training and development program in 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the FII RD ESCRI 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 lead change in
– FII RD ESCRI is one of the leading players in the industry in Brazil. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in Brazil but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled FII RD ESCRI in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of FII RD ESCRI in the sector have low bargaining power. FII RD ESCRI has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps FII RD ESCRI to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– FII RD ESCRI 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 Brazil 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 recruit top talent
– FII RD ESCRI is one of the leading players in the 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.
Weaknesses of FII RD ESCRI | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of FII RD ESCRI are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, FII RD ESCRI has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. FII RD ESCRI 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.
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 FII RD ESCRI supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, FII RD ESCRI is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left FII RD ESCRI vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at FII RD ESCRI, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. FII RD ESCRI has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as FII RD ESCRI is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ less understanding of FII RD ESCRI strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of FII RD ESCRI 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of FII RD ESCRI products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, FII RD ESCRI needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on FII RD ESCRI ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of FII RD ESCRI still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though FII RD ESCRI has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, FII RD ESCRI 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.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at FII RD ESCRI 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
– FII RD ESCRI 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As FII RD ESCRI 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.
FII RD ESCRI Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of FII RD ESCRI are -
Manufacturing automation
– FII RD ESCRI 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, FII RD ESCRI can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that FII RD ESCRI operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, FII RD ESCRI 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of FII RD ESCRI has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help FII RD ESCRI to build a more holistic ecosystem for FII RD ESCRI products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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 FII RD ESCRI in the industry. Now FII RD ESCRI can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, FII RD ESCRI is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. FII RD ESCRI 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.
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. FII RD ESCRI 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. FII RD ESCRI 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help FII RD ESCRI to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– FII RD ESCRI 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for FII RD ESCRI 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.
Loyalty marketing
– FII RD ESCRI 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.
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 FII RD ESCRI 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.
Threats FII RD ESCRI External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of FII RD ESCRI are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents FII RD ESCRI with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Environmental challenges
– FII RD ESCRI 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. FII RD ESCRI can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– FII RD ESCRI has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– FII RD ESCRI 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.
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 FII RD ESCRI.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, FII RD ESCRI may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on FII RD ESCRI 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that FII RD ESCRI is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 FII RD ESCRI in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of FII RD ESCRI Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI 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 FII RD ESCRI needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
