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 household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, increasing energy prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is backlash against globalization, 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 -
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.
Training and development
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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 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.
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.
Need for greater diversity
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 -
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.
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.
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.
Manufacturing automation
– FII Anhanguera Educacional 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.
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.
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 Anhanguera Educacional can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that FII Anhanguera Educacional operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
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.
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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects FII Anhanguera Educacional can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 FII Anhanguera Educacional to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. FII Anhanguera Educacional can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 -
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.
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.
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.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, FII Anhanguera Educacional 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 Anhanguera Educacional prominent markets.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.