Alliance Creative Gr (ACGX) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Business Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Alliance Creative Gr (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Alliance Creative Gr is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Alliance Creative Gr
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Alliance Creative Gr can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Alliance Creative Gr, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Alliance Creative Gr 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 Alliance Creative Gr can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Alliance Creative Gr
2. Improving business portfolio management of Alliance Creative Gr
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Business Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Alliance Creative Gr
Strengths of Alliance Creative Gr | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Alliance Creative Gr are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Alliance Creative Gr in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Alliance Creative Gr has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Alliance Creative Gr to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Alliance Creative Gr 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 Business Services industry. The technology infrastructure of United States 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.
Organizational Resilience of Alliance Creative Gr
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Alliance Creative Gr does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Alliance Creative Gr has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Alliance Creative Gr staying ahead in the Business Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Alliance Creative Gr is one of the most innovative firm in Business Services sector.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Alliance Creative Gr in Business Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Alliance Creative Gr 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.
Learning organization
- Alliance Creative Gr 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 Alliance Creative Gr is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Alliance Creative Gr emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Alliance Creative Gr comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Business Services 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.
Ability to lead change in Business Services
– Alliance Creative Gr is one of the leading players in the Business Services industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Business Services industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Alliance Creative Gr in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Alliance Creative Gr 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Alliance Creative Gr has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Business Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Alliance Creative Gr have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Alliance Creative Gr | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Alliance Creative Gr are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Alliance Creative Gr needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Business Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Alliance Creative Gr can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Alliance Creative Gr is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Alliance Creative Gr has high operating costs in the Business Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Alliance Creative Gr lucrative customers.
High dependence on Alliance Creative Gr ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Alliance Creative Gr still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Business Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Alliance Creative Gr has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Alliance Creative Gr is just above the Business Services industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Alliance Creative Gr, in the dynamic environment of Business Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Alliance Creative Gr has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Alliance Creative Gr has some of the most successful models in the Business Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Alliance Creative Gr should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Alliance Creative Gr needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Alliance Creative Gr has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Business Services industry over the last five years. Alliance Creative Gr 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Alliance Creative Gr is one of the leading players in the Business Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Business Services industry in last five years.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Alliance Creative Gr is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Alliance Creative Gr to provide better information regarding Business Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Employees’ less understanding of Alliance Creative Gr strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Alliance Creative Gr 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.
Alliance Creative Gr Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Alliance Creative Gr are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Alliance Creative Gr in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Business Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Alliance Creative Gr to increase its market reach. Alliance Creative Gr 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Alliance Creative Gr can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Alliance Creative Gr has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Business Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Alliance Creative Gr to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Alliance Creative Gr to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Alliance Creative Gr can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Business Services 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Alliance Creative Gr 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 Alliance Creative Gr to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Alliance Creative Gr can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Alliance Creative Gr operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Business Services sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Alliance Creative Gr 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Alliance Creative Gr 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Alliance Creative Gr 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 Alliance Creative Gr to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Developing new processes and practices
– Alliance Creative Gr can develop new processes and procedures in Business Services 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Alliance Creative Gr 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Alliance Creative Gr is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Alliance Creative Gr can utilize new technology in the field of Business Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats Alliance Creative Gr External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Alliance Creative Gr are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Alliance Creative Gr 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 Alliance Creative Gr prominent markets.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Alliance Creative Gr 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Alliance Creative Gr 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 Business Services industry and other sectors.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Alliance Creative Gr is facing in Business Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Alliance Creative Gr in Business Services industry. The Business Services 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Alliance Creative Gr has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Business Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Alliance Creative Gr needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Business Services 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.
Environmental challenges
– Alliance Creative Gr 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. Alliance Creative Gr can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Business Services industry.
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 Alliance Creative Gr business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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
– Alliance Creative Gr 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 Business Services industry.
Increasing wage structure of Alliance Creative Gr
– 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 Alliance Creative Gr.
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. Alliance Creative Gr needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Business Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Alliance Creative Gr Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Alliance Creative Gr 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 Alliance Creative Gr 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 Alliance Creative Gr 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 Alliance Creative Gr 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 Alliance Creative Gr needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
