SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for FII Anhanguera Educacional (Brazil)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , FII Anhanguera Educacional is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, technology disruption, increasing commodity prices,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of FII Anhanguera Educacional
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that FII Anhanguera Educacional can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the FII Anhanguera Educacional, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of FII Anhanguera Educacional
2. Improving business portfolio management of FII Anhanguera Educacional
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 Anhanguera Educacional
Strengths of FII Anhanguera Educacional | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of FII Anhanguera Educacional are -
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– FII Anhanguera Educacional is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of FII Anhanguera Educacional in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– FII Anhanguera Educacional is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
High brand equity
– FII Anhanguera Educacional has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled FII Anhanguera Educacional to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For FII Anhanguera Educacional digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– FII Anhanguera Educacional is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– FII Anhanguera Educacional has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – FII Anhanguera Educacional staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to lead change in
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 FII Anhanguera Educacional is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at FII Anhanguera Educacional emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of FII Anhanguera Educacional in the sector have low bargaining power. FII Anhanguera Educacional has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps FII Anhanguera Educacional to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of FII Anhanguera Educacional | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of FII Anhanguera Educacional are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of FII Anhanguera Educacional is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but FII Anhanguera Educacional needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help FII Anhanguera Educacional to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on FII Anhanguera Educacional ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, FII Anhanguera Educacional has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract FII Anhanguera Educacional lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of FII Anhanguera Educacional, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact 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.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Brazil, FII Anhanguera Educacional needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of FII Anhanguera Educacional products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, FII Anhanguera Educacional needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at FII Anhanguera Educacional, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. FII Anhanguera Educacional has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
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 Anhanguera Educacional supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, FII Anhanguera Educacional is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left FII Anhanguera Educacional vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
FII Anhanguera Educacional Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of FII Anhanguera Educacional are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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 Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, FII Anhanguera Educacional is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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 Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Buying journey improvements
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional 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, FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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. FII Anhanguera Educacional can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Developing new processes and practices
– FII Anhanguera Educacional can develop new processes and procedures in 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.
Loyalty marketing
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 FII Anhanguera Educacional External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of FII Anhanguera Educacional are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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 Anhanguera Educacional business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– FII Anhanguera Educacional has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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.
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. FII Anhanguera Educacional can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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. FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 industry are lowering. It can presents FII Anhanguera Educacional with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Environmental challenges
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Increasing wage structure of FII Anhanguera Educacional
– 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 FII Anhanguera Educacional.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of FII Anhanguera Educacional Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.