Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref (DLR_pg) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , 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, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing energy prices,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref
2. Improving business portfolio management of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref
Strengths of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref are -
Organizational Resilience of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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.
Analytics focus
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is one of the leading players in the 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.
Learning organization
- Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref staying ahead in the 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref in the sector have low bargaining power. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the 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, Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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, Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is just above the 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Lack of clear differentiation of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 industry.
Loyalty marketing
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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, Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref in the industry. Now Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref to increase its market reach. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 industry and other sectors.
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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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. Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref in industry. The 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 industry.
Increasing wage structure of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref
– 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref 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 Digital Realty Trust Inc Pg Pref needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
