SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Axiom Holdings (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Axiom Holdings is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Axiom Holdings can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Axiom Holdings, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Axiom Holdings
2. Improving business portfolio management of Axiom Holdings
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Personal Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Axiom Holdings
Strengths of Axiom Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Axiom Holdings are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Axiom Holdings in Personal Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Personal Services
– Axiom Holdings is one of the leading players in the Personal Services industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Personal Services industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Axiom Holdings in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Axiom Holdings
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Axiom Holdings does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Personal Services industry
– Axiom Holdings has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Axiom Holdings to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Personal Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Axiom Holdings to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Axiom Holdings has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Axiom Holdings 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 Personal Services industry
– Axiom Holdings is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Axiom Holdings 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 Personal 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Axiom Holdings 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.
Learning organization
- Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Axiom Holdings emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Axiom Holdings has one of the best training and development program in Services 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Axiom Holdings has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Personal Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Axiom Holdings have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Personal Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Axiom Holdings digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Axiom Holdings 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.
Weaknesses of Axiom Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Axiom Holdings are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Axiom Holdings has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Personal Services industry over the last five years. Axiom Holdings 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Axiom Holdings needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Personal Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Axiom Holdings can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Axiom Holdings is planning to shift buying processes online.
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 Axiom Holdings supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Axiom Holdings is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Axiom Holdings vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Axiom Holdings has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Personal Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Personal Services industry, Axiom Holdings 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, Axiom Holdings has high operating costs in the Personal Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Axiom Holdings lucrative customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Axiom Holdings is just above the Personal 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Axiom Holdings strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Axiom Holdings 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Axiom Holdings 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Axiom Holdings is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Personal Services industry, but Axiom Holdings needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Axiom Holdings to focus more on services in the Personal Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Axiom Holdings 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 Personal Services industry using digital technology.
Axiom Holdings Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Axiom Holdings are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Axiom Holdings 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 Personal Services industry.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Axiom Holdings has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Axiom Holdings to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Axiom Holdings to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Personal Services industry. This can help Axiom Holdings to build a more holistic ecosystem for Axiom Holdings products in the Personal Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Axiom Holdings can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Axiom Holdings operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Personal Services sector.
Loyalty marketing
– Axiom Holdings 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Personal Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Axiom Holdings 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. Axiom Holdings 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Axiom Holdings can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Personal Services 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Axiom Holdings 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Axiom Holdings is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Axiom Holdings can utilize new technology in the field of Personal Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Axiom Holdings 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Personal Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Axiom Holdings in the Personal Services industry. Now Axiom Holdings can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Axiom Holdings External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Axiom Holdings are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings prominent markets.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Personal Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Axiom Holdings can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Axiom Holdings
– 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 Axiom Holdings.
Regulatory challenges
– Axiom Holdings needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Personal Services industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Axiom Holdings in Personal Services industry. The Personal 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.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Axiom Holdings has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Axiom Holdings needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal 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.
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 Axiom Holdings in the Personal Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Axiom Holdings 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 Personal Services industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Axiom Holdings is facing in Personal Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Axiom Holdings 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 Personal Services industry are lowering. It can presents Axiom Holdings with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Personal Services sector.
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 Axiom Holdings.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Axiom Holdings Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings 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 Axiom Holdings needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
