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 – increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, 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 -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– FII Anhanguera Educacional has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled FII Anhanguera Educacional to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped FII Anhanguera Educacional to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
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.
Analytics focus
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of FII Anhanguera Educacional comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
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.
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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– FII Anhanguera Educacional has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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.
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.
Organizational Resilience of FII Anhanguera Educacional
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing FII Anhanguera Educacional does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
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.
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 -
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.
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.
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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Brazil, FII Anhanguera Educacional is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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.
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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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 -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help FII Anhanguera Educacional to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help FII Anhanguera Educacional to increase its market reach. FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of FII Anhanguera Educacional has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help FII Anhanguera Educacional to build a more holistic ecosystem for FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional in the industry. Now FII Anhanguera Educacional can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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.
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.
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 -
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.
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.
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. FII Anhanguera Educacional needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Anhanguera Educacional in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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.
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 Anhanguera Educacional.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that FII Anhanguera Educacional is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
