Stingray Digital B (RAYb) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Broadcasting & Cable TV
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Stingray Digital B (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Stingray Digital B is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, geopolitical disruptions, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Stingray Digital B
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Stingray Digital B can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Stingray Digital B, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Stingray Digital B 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 Stingray Digital B can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Stingray Digital B
2. Improving business portfolio management of Stingray Digital B
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Canada
4. Making a Broadcasting & Cable TV sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Stingray Digital B
Strengths of Stingray Digital B | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Stingray Digital B are -
Organizational Resilience of Stingray Digital B
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Stingray Digital B does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Stingray Digital B is one of the leading players in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry in Canada. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Canada. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Diverse revenue streams
– Stingray Digital B is present in almost all the verticals within the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. This has provided Stingray Digital B 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Stingray Digital B has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Stingray Digital B staying ahead in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Stingray Digital B 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Stingray Digital B in Broadcasting & Cable TV 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry
– Stingray Digital B is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Stingray Digital B has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Stingray Digital B have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Stingray Digital B digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Stingray Digital B 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.
Learning organization
- Stingray Digital B 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 Stingray Digital B is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Stingray Digital B emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Stingray Digital B in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Stingray Digital B has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Stingray Digital B to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Stingray Digital B comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Broadcasting & Cable TV 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.
Weaknesses of Stingray Digital B | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Stingray Digital B are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Stingray Digital B needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Stingray Digital B can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Stingray Digital B is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Stingray Digital B has high operating costs in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Stingray Digital B lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Stingray Digital B, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Broadcasting & Cable TV 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 Stingray Digital B products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Stingray Digital B needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry, Stingray Digital B 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Canada, Stingray Digital B 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry.
Skills based hiring in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Stingray Digital B 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Stingray Digital B has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Stingray Digital B has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry over the last five years. Stingray Digital B 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Canada, Stingray Digital B needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Stingray Digital B 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.
Stingray Digital B Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Stingray Digital B are -
Loyalty marketing
– Stingray Digital B 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Stingray Digital B 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 Stingray Digital B to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Stingray Digital B can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Stingray Digital B 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Stingray Digital B can develop new processes and procedures in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Stingray Digital B in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Stingray Digital B 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Stingray Digital B can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Stingray Digital B operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Broadcasting & Cable TV sector.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Stingray Digital B 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 Stingray Digital B to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Stingray Digital B 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. Stingray Digital B 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Stingray Digital B in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. Now Stingray Digital B can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Stingray Digital B has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Broadcasting & Cable TV sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Stingray Digital B to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Stingray Digital B to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Stingray Digital B to increase its market reach. Stingray Digital B 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.
Threats Stingray Digital B External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Stingray Digital B are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Stingray Digital B may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Broadcasting & Cable TV sector.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Stingray Digital B 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry and other sectors.
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 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. Stingray Digital B needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Broadcasting & Cable TV industry are lowering. It can presents Stingray Digital B with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Broadcasting & Cable TV sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Stingray Digital B 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Stingray Digital B 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Stingray Digital B is facing in Broadcasting & Cable TV sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Stingray Digital B.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Stingray Digital B in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. The Broadcasting & Cable TV industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Stingray Digital B business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Stingray Digital B
– 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 Stingray Digital B.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Stingray Digital B Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Stingray Digital B 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 Stingray Digital B 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 Stingray Digital B 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 Stingray Digital B 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 Stingray Digital B needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.