SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Ballantyne Strong (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Ballantyne Strong is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
there is backlash against globalization, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Ballantyne Strong
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Ballantyne Strong can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ballantyne Strong, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ballantyne Strong 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 Ballantyne Strong can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Ballantyne Strong
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ballantyne Strong
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Photography sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ballantyne Strong
Strengths of Ballantyne Strong | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Ballantyne Strong are -
Ability to lead change in Photography
– Ballantyne Strong is one of the leading players in the Photography industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Photography industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Ballantyne Strong 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 Ballantyne Strong 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.
High brand equity
– Ballantyne Strong has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Ballantyne Strong to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Ballantyne Strong 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 Photography 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Ballantyne Strong has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Photography industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Ballantyne Strong have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Ballantyne Strong has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Ballantyne Strong 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.
Learning organization
- Ballantyne Strong 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 Ballantyne Strong is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Ballantyne Strong emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Photography industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Ballantyne Strong digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Ballantyne Strong 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Ballantyne Strong is one of the most innovative firm in Photography sector.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Ballantyne Strong in Photography industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management in the Photography industry
– Ballantyne Strong 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)
– Ballantyne Strong has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Ballantyne Strong staying ahead in the Photography industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Ballantyne Strong | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Ballantyne Strong are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Ballantyne Strong needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Photography industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Ballantyne Strong can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Ballantyne Strong is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Ballantyne Strong 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.
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 Ballantyne Strong supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Ballantyne Strong is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Ballantyne Strong vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Ballantyne Strong 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 Photography industry using digital technology.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Ballantyne Strong, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Photography 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Ballantyne Strong products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Ballantyne Strong needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Ballantyne Strong has some of the most successful models in the Photography industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Ballantyne Strong should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Ballantyne Strong has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Photography industry over the last five years. Ballantyne Strong 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Photography industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Ballantyne Strong 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 Photography industry.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Ballantyne Strong is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Ballantyne Strong to provide better information regarding Photography products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High dependence on Ballantyne Strong ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Ballantyne Strong still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Photography industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Ballantyne Strong has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ballantyne Strong Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Ballantyne Strong are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Ballantyne Strong can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Ballantyne Strong operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Photography sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Ballantyne Strong can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Photography 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Ballantyne Strong 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
– Ballantyne Strong 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Ballantyne Strong can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Photography industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Ballantyne Strong 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. Ballantyne Strong 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.
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. Ballantyne Strong can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Ballantyne Strong has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Photography sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Ballantyne Strong to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Ballantyne Strong to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Ballantyne Strong is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Ballantyne Strong can utilize new technology in the field of Photography industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Ballantyne Strong 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 Ballantyne Strong to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Ballantyne Strong to increase its market reach. Ballantyne Strong 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Ballantyne Strong 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Ballantyne Strong 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 Photography industry.
Threats Ballantyne Strong External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Ballantyne Strong 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. Ballantyne Strong 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Ballantyne Strong 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 Ballantyne Strong prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of Ballantyne Strong
– 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 Ballantyne Strong.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Ballantyne Strong 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 Photography industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Photography industry are lowering. It can presents Ballantyne Strong with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Photography sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Ballantyne Strong in Photography industry. The Photography 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Ballantyne Strong is facing in Photography sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Ballantyne Strong needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Photography industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Ballantyne Strong 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
– Ballantyne Strong has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Photography industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ballantyne Strong needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Photography 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Ballantyne Strong 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 Photography 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 Ballantyne Strong business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ballantyne Strong Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Ballantyne Strong 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 Ballantyne Strong 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 Ballantyne Strong 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 Ballantyne Strong 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 Ballantyne Strong needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.