SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Bluegreen Vacations (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Bluegreen Vacations is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Bluegreen Vacations
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Bluegreen Vacations can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Bluegreen Vacations, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Bluegreen Vacations
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bluegreen Vacations
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Hotels & Motels sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Bluegreen Vacations
Strengths of Bluegreen Vacations | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Bluegreen Vacations are -
Digital Transformation in Hotels & Motels industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Bluegreen Vacations digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Bluegreen Vacations has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Bluegreen Vacations in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Bluegreen Vacations has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Bluegreen Vacations to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management in the Hotels & Motels industry
– Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Bluegreen Vacations does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Bluegreen Vacations has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Hotels & Motels industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Bluegreen Vacations have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Bluegreen Vacations comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Hotels & Motels 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.
High brand equity
– Bluegreen Vacations has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Bluegreen Vacations to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Bluegreen Vacations is one of the leading players in the Hotels & Motels industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– Bluegreen Vacations is one of the most innovative firm in Hotels & Motels sector.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Weaknesses of Bluegreen Vacations | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Bluegreen Vacations are -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Skills based hiring in Hotels & Motels industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Hotels & Motels industry, Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Bluegreen Vacations is just above the Hotels & Motels 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Bluegreen Vacations has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Hotels & Motels industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High dependence on Bluegreen Vacations ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Bluegreen Vacations still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Hotels & Motels industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Bluegreen Vacations has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Bluegreen Vacations is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Bluegreen Vacations to provide better information regarding Hotels & Motels products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
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 Bluegreen Vacations supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Bluegreen Vacations is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Bluegreen Vacations vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Bluegreen Vacations has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Hotels & Motels industry over the last five years. Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Hotels & Motels industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Bluegreen Vacations can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Bluegreen Vacations is planning to shift buying processes online.
Bluegreen Vacations Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Bluegreen Vacations are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Bluegreen Vacations 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 Hotels & Motels industry.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Hotels & Motels industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Bluegreen Vacations can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Bluegreen Vacations to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Hotels & Motels industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Bluegreen Vacations 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. Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Bluegreen Vacations to increase its market reach. Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Bluegreen Vacations can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Hotels & Motels 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Bluegreen Vacations 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Bluegreen Vacations has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Hotels & Motels sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Bluegreen Vacations to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Bluegreen Vacations to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Bluegreen Vacations External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Bluegreen Vacations are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Hotels & Motels industry are lowering. It can presents Bluegreen Vacations with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Hotels & Motels sector.
Environmental challenges
– Bluegreen Vacations 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. Bluegreen Vacations can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Hotels & Motels industry.
Increasing wage structure of Bluegreen Vacations
– 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 Bluegreen Vacations.
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 Bluegreen Vacations business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Bluegreen Vacations in Hotels & Motels industry. The Hotels & Motels 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Hotels & Motels industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Bluegreen Vacations can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Bluegreen Vacations 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 Hotels & Motels industry and other sectors.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Bluegreen Vacations 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
– Bluegreen Vacations has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Hotels & Motels industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Bluegreen Vacations needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Hotels & Motels 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.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Bluegreen Vacations 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 Hotels & Motels industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Bluegreen Vacations 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 Hotels & Motels industry.
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. Bluegreen Vacations needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Hotels & Motels industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bluegreen Vacations Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations 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 Bluegreen Vacations needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.