Life Clips (LCLP) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Motion Pictures
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Life Clips (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Life Clips is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
geopolitical disruptions, increasing commodity prices, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Life Clips can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Life Clips, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Life Clips 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 Life Clips can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Life Clips
2. Improving business portfolio management of Life Clips
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Motion Pictures sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Life Clips
Strengths of Life Clips | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Life Clips are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Life Clips has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Life Clips staying ahead in the Motion Pictures industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Life Clips has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Motion Pictures industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Life Clips have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Life Clips 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Motion Pictures industry
– Life Clips is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Life Clips in Motion Pictures industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Motion Pictures industry
– Life Clips has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Life Clips to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Motion Pictures industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Life Clips to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Life Clips 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 Motion Pictures 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.
High brand equity
– Life Clips has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Life Clips to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Life Clips in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Life Clips has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Life Clips to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Training and development
– Life Clips has one of the best training and development program in Services 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Life Clips has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Life Clips 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.
Learning organization
- Life Clips 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 Life Clips is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Life Clips emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Life Clips | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Life Clips are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Life Clips is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Life Clips to provide better information regarding Motion Pictures products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Life Clips is one of the leading players in the Motion Pictures industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Motion Pictures industry in last five years.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Life Clips needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Life Clips, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Motion Pictures 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Life Clips has some of the most successful models in the Motion Pictures industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Life Clips should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring in Motion Pictures industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Life Clips has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Motion Pictures industry, Life Clips 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Life Clips strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Life Clips 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.
High dependence on Life Clips ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Life Clips still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Motion Pictures industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Life Clips has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Lack of clear differentiation of Life Clips products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Life Clips 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 Life Clips needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Motion Pictures industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Life Clips can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Life Clips is planning to shift buying processes online.
Life Clips Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Life Clips are -
Loyalty marketing
– Life Clips 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Life Clips can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Life Clips operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Motion Pictures sector.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Life Clips to increase its market reach. Life Clips 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Life Clips 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 Motion Pictures industry.
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 Life Clips 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Life Clips is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Life Clips can utilize new technology in the field of Motion Pictures industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Life Clips has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Motion Pictures sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Life Clips to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Life Clips to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Motion Pictures industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Life Clips can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Life Clips has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Motion Pictures industry. This can help Life Clips to build a more holistic ecosystem for Life Clips products in the Motion Pictures industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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. Life Clips can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Life Clips 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, Life Clips 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Life Clips can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Life Clips External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Life Clips are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Life Clips is facing in Motion Pictures sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Life Clips 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.
Increasing wage structure of Life Clips
– 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 Life Clips.
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. Life Clips needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Motion Pictures industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Life Clips has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Motion Pictures industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Life Clips needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Motion Pictures 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Life Clips 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 Motion Pictures industry and other sectors.
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. Life Clips 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Life Clips may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Motion Pictures sector.
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.
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 Life Clips business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, 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 Life Clips.
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 Life Clips in the Motion Pictures sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Life Clips Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Life Clips 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 Life Clips 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 Life Clips 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 Life Clips 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 Life Clips needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.