SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Knowles Cor (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Knowles Cor is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Knowles Cor can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Knowles Cor, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Knowles Cor 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 Knowles Cor can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Knowles Cor
2. Improving business portfolio management of Knowles Cor
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 Knowles Cor
Strengths of Knowles Cor | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Knowles Cor are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Knowles Cor in Audio & Video Equipment industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Knowles Cor 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Knowles Cor 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Audio & Video Equipment industry
– Knowles Cor is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Knowles Cor 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Knowles Cor has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Knowles Cor 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)
– Knowles Cor has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Knowles Cor staying ahead in the Audio & Video Equipment industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Audio & Video Equipment industry
– Knowles Cor has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Knowles Cor to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Audio & Video Equipment industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Knowles Cor to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Knowles Cor 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 Knowles Cor have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Knowles Cor in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Knowles Cor has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Knowles Cor to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Knowles Cor 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 Knowles Cor is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Knowles Cor emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Knowles Cor 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.
Weaknesses of Knowles Cor | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Knowles Cor are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Knowles Cor has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the Audio & Video Equipment industry using digital technology.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Knowles Cor has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Audio & Video Equipment industry over the last five years. Knowles Cor 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Knowles Cor has some of the most successful models in the Audio & Video Equipment industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Knowles Cor should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Knowles Cor 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 Knowles Cor can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Knowles Cor is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Knowles Cor needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Knowles Cor, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Audio & Video Equipment 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 Knowles Cor products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Knowles Cor needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Knowles Cor, in the dynamic environment of Audio & Video Equipment industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Knowles Cor has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Knowles Cor 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Knowles Cor strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Knowles Cor don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Knowles Cor 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.
Knowles Cor Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Knowles Cor are -
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Knowles Cor has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Audio & Video Equipment industry. This can help Knowles Cor to build a more holistic ecosystem for Knowles Cor products in the Audio & Video Equipment industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Knowles Cor 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Knowles Cor 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Knowles Cor in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Audio & Video Equipment industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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. Knowles Cor 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. Knowles Cor 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Knowles Cor 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Knowles Cor can develop new processes and procedures in Audio & Video Equipment 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Knowles Cor 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Knowles Cor can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Audio & Video Equipment 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Audio & Video Equipment industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Knowles Cor can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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. Knowles Cor can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Knowles Cor is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Knowles Cor 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.
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 Knowles Cor 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 Knowles Cor External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Knowles Cor are -
Regulatory challenges
– Knowles Cor 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 Audio & Video Equipment industry regulations.
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 Knowles Cor 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Audio & Video Equipment industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Knowles Cor can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Knowles Cor can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate Knowles Cor prominent markets.
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. Knowles Cor needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Audio & Video Equipment industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Knowles Cor in the Audio & Video Equipment sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Knowles Cor is facing in Audio & Video Equipment sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Knowles Cor 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. Knowles Cor can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Audio & Video Equipment industry.
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 Knowles Cor.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Knowles Cor has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Audio & Video Equipment industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Knowles Cor 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Audio & Video Equipment industry are lowering. It can presents Knowles Cor with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Audio & Video Equipment sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Knowles Cor 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Knowles Cor Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Knowles Cor 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 Knowles Cor 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 Knowles Cor 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 Knowles Cor 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 Knowles Cor needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
