Lee Enterprises (LEE) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Printing & Publishing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Lee Enterprises (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Lee Enterprises is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing commodity prices, increasing energy prices, technology disruption,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Lee Enterprises can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lee Enterprises, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lee Enterprises 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 Lee Enterprises can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Lee Enterprises
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lee Enterprises
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Printing & Publishing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Lee Enterprises
Strengths of Lee Enterprises | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lee Enterprises are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Lee Enterprises has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Lee Enterprises 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Lee Enterprises is one of the most innovative firm in Printing & Publishing sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Lee Enterprises is one of the leading players in the Printing & Publishing 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Lee Enterprises in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Lee Enterprises has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Lee Enterprises to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Lee Enterprises in Printing & Publishing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Printing & Publishing
– Lee Enterprises is one of the leading players in the Printing & Publishing industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Printing & Publishing industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Lee Enterprises in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Lee Enterprises 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 Lee Enterprises is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Lee Enterprises emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Lee Enterprises
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Lee Enterprises does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Lee Enterprises has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Printing & Publishing industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Lee Enterprises have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Lee Enterprises has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Lee Enterprises to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Lee Enterprises is present in almost all the verticals within the Printing & Publishing industry. This has provided Lee Enterprises 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.
Digital Transformation in Printing & Publishing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Lee Enterprises digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Lee Enterprises 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.
Weaknesses of Lee Enterprises | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Lee Enterprises are -
High bargaining power of channel partners in Printing & Publishing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Lee Enterprises 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 Printing & Publishing industry.
Lack of clear differentiation of Lee Enterprises products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Lee Enterprises 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 Printing & Publishing industry, Lee Enterprises 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Lee Enterprises is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Printing & Publishing industry, but Lee Enterprises needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Lee Enterprises to focus more on services in the Printing & Publishing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Skills based hiring in Printing & Publishing industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Lee Enterprises 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Lee Enterprises strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Lee Enterprises 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Lee Enterprises is just above the Printing & Publishing 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Lee Enterprises needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Lee Enterprises needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Printing & Publishing industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Lee Enterprises can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Lee Enterprises is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on Lee Enterprises ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Lee Enterprises still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Printing & Publishing industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Lee Enterprises has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Lee Enterprises has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Printing & Publishing industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Lee Enterprises Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Lee Enterprises are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Lee Enterprises can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Lee Enterprises operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Printing & Publishing sector.
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 Lee Enterprises 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Lee Enterprises 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 Lee Enterprises to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Lee Enterprises can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Lee Enterprises 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Lee Enterprises is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Lee Enterprises can utilize new technology in the field of Printing & Publishing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Lee Enterprises in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Printing & Publishing industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Lee Enterprises 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 Lee Enterprises has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Printing & Publishing industry. This can help Lee Enterprises to build a more holistic ecosystem for Lee Enterprises products in the Printing & Publishing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Lee Enterprises 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Printing & Publishing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Lee Enterprises can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Lee Enterprises has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Printing & Publishing sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Lee Enterprises to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Lee Enterprises to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Lee Enterprises can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Printing & Publishing 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.
Threats Lee Enterprises External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Lee Enterprises are -
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 Lee Enterprises.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Lee Enterprises 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Printing & Publishing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Lee Enterprises can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Lee Enterprises 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 Printing & Publishing industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Lee Enterprises may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Printing & Publishing sector.
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 Lee Enterprises business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Lee Enterprises in the Printing & Publishing 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. Lee Enterprises needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Printing & Publishing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Lee Enterprises has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Printing & Publishing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Lee Enterprises needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Printing & Publishing 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Lee Enterprises in Printing & Publishing industry. The Printing & Publishing 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.
Environmental challenges
– Lee Enterprises 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. Lee Enterprises can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Printing & Publishing industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lee Enterprises is facing in Printing & Publishing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Lee Enterprises Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Lee Enterprises 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 Lee Enterprises 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 Lee Enterprises 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 Lee Enterprises 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 Lee Enterprises needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.