SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for FII Excellence (Brazil)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , FII Excellence is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing energy prices, technology disruption, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that FII Excellence can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the FII Excellence, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which FII Excellence 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 Excellence can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of FII Excellence
2. Improving business portfolio management of FII Excellence
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Brazil
4. Making a NA sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of FII Excellence
Strengths of FII Excellence | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of FII Excellence are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of FII Excellence in NA industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in NA industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For FII Excellence digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. FII Excellence 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that FII Excellence 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.
Ability to lead change in NA
– FII Excellence is one of the leading players in the NA industry in Brazil. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the NA industry in Brazil but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled FII Excellence in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– FII Excellence has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – FII Excellence staying ahead in the NA industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of FII Excellence in the NA sector have low bargaining power. FII Excellence has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps FII Excellence to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– FII Excellence is one of the most innovative firm in NA sector.
Learning organization
- FII Excellence 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 Excellence is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at FII Excellence emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– FII Excellence has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive NA industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of FII Excellence have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– FII Excellence has one of the best training and development program in NA 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– FII Excellence is present in almost all the verticals within the NA industry. This has provided FII Excellence 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.
Analytics focus
– FII Excellence 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 NA 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.
Weaknesses of FII Excellence | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of FII Excellence are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of FII Excellence is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the NA industry, but FII Excellence needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help FII Excellence to focus more on services in the NA industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As FII Excellence is one of the leading players in the NA industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the NA industry in last five years.
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 Excellence supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, FII Excellence is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left FII Excellence vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that FII Excellence needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the NA industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at FII Excellence can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as FII Excellence is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners in NA industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Brazil, FII Excellence 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 NA industry.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Brazil, FII Excellence needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of FII Excellence is just above the NA 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of FII Excellence products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, FII Excellence needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, FII Excellence 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 NA industry using digital technology.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, FII Excellence is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help FII Excellence to provide better information regarding NA products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
FII Excellence has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the NA 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 Excellence Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of FII Excellence are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, FII Excellence 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 Excellence to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in NA industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for FII Excellence in the NA industry. Now FII Excellence can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for FII Excellence in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the NA industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– FII Excellence can improve the customer journey of consumers in the NA 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, FII Excellence is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. FII Excellence can utilize new technology in the field of NA industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, FII Excellence 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– FII Excellence has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in NA sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled FII Excellence to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help FII Excellence to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of FII Excellence has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in NA industry. This can help FII Excellence to build a more holistic ecosystem for FII Excellence products in the NA industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– FII Excellence can develop new processes and procedures in NA 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at FII Excellence 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 NA industry.
Leveraging digital technologies
– FII Excellence 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.
Loyalty marketing
– FII Excellence 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for FII Excellence 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.
Threats FII Excellence External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of FII Excellence are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– FII Excellence 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 NA industry.
Regulatory challenges
– FII Excellence 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 NA industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, FII Excellence 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 Excellence prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of FII Excellence
– 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 Excellence.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that FII Excellence is facing in NA sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on FII Excellence 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 NA industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to NA industry are lowering. It can presents FII Excellence with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the NA 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 FII Excellence.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– FII Excellence has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the NA industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, FII Excellence needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the NA 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 Excellence may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of NA sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for FII Excellence in NA industry. The NA 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.
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 Excellence business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of FII Excellence Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at FII Excellence 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 Excellence 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 Excellence 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 Excellence 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 Excellence needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
