E Digital Corp (EDIG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Audio & Video Equipment
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for E Digital Corp (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , E Digital Corp 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 commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, technology disruption,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, 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 E Digital Corp can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the E Digital Corp, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which E Digital Corp 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 E Digital Corp can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of E Digital Corp
2. Improving business portfolio management of E Digital Corp
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Audio & Video Equipment sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of E Digital Corp
Strengths of E Digital Corp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of E Digital Corp are -
Ability to lead change in Audio & Video Equipment
– E Digital Corp is one of the leading players in the Audio & Video Equipment industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Audio & Video Equipment industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled E Digital Corp in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– E Digital Corp has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Audio & Video Equipment industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of E Digital Corp have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– E Digital Corp is one of the leading players in the Audio & Video Equipment 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– E Digital Corp has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. E Digital Corp 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Audio & Video Equipment industry
– E Digital Corp has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled E Digital Corp to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Audio & Video Equipment industry. The sustainable margins have also helped E Digital Corp to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of E Digital Corp comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Audio & Video Equipment 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– E Digital Corp is present in almost all the verticals within the Audio & Video Equipment industry. This has provided E Digital Corp 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
– E Digital Corp 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 Audio & Video Equipment 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of E Digital Corp in Audio & Video Equipment industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– E Digital Corp is one of the most innovative firm in Audio & Video Equipment sector.
Training and development
– E Digital Corp has one of the best training and development program in Consumer Cyclical 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.
Learning organization
- E Digital Corp 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 E Digital Corp is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at E Digital Corp emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of E Digital Corp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of E Digital Corp are -
High dependence on E Digital Corp ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of E Digital Corp still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Audio & Video Equipment industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though E Digital Corp has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of E Digital Corp is just above the Audio & Video Equipment 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 E Digital Corp products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, E Digital Corp needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that E Digital Corp needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Audio & Video Equipment industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at E Digital Corp can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as E Digital Corp is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As E Digital Corp is one of the leading players in the Audio & Video Equipment industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Audio & Video Equipment industry in last five years.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Audio & Video Equipment industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, E Digital Corp 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 Audio & Video Equipment industry.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of E Digital Corp is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Audio & Video Equipment industry, but E Digital Corp needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help E Digital Corp to focus more on services in the Audio & Video Equipment industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
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 E Digital Corp supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, E Digital Corp is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left E Digital Corp vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– E Digital Corp 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, E Digital Corp needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, E Digital Corp 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.
E Digital Corp Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of E Digital Corp are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects E Digital Corp can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. E Digital Corp can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Audio & Video Equipment industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. E Digital Corp 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. E Digital Corp 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.
Loyalty marketing
– E Digital Corp 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
– E Digital Corp has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Audio & Video Equipment sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled E Digital Corp to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help E Digital Corp 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, E Digital Corp 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 E Digital Corp to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at E Digital Corp 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 Audio & Video Equipment industry.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, E Digital Corp is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. E Digital Corp can utilize new technology in the field of Audio & Video Equipment 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 E Digital Corp 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 E Digital Corp to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help E Digital Corp to increase its market reach. E Digital Corp 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– E Digital Corp 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of E Digital Corp has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Audio & Video Equipment industry. This can help E Digital Corp to build a more holistic ecosystem for E Digital Corp products in the Audio & Video Equipment industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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 E Digital Corp 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.
Threats E Digital Corp External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of E Digital Corp are -
Increasing wage structure of E Digital Corp
– 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 E Digital Corp.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for E Digital Corp in Audio & Video Equipment industry. The Audio & Video Equipment 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.
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.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– E Digital Corp 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on E Digital Corp 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 Audio & Video Equipment industry and other sectors.
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. E Digital Corp needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Audio & Video Equipment industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that E Digital Corp is facing in Audio & Video Equipment sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 E Digital Corp business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– E Digital Corp has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Audio & Video Equipment industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, E Digital Corp needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Audio & Video Equipment 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.
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 E Digital Corp.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– E Digital Corp 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 Audio & Video Equipment industry.
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 E Digital Corp in the Audio & Video Equipment sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of E Digital Corp Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at E Digital Corp 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 E Digital Corp 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 E Digital Corp 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 E Digital Corp 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 E Digital Corp needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.