SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Yellow Pages (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Yellow Pages is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing energy prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Yellow Pages can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Yellow Pages, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Yellow Pages 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 Yellow Pages can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Yellow Pages
2. Improving business portfolio management of Yellow Pages
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Canada
4. Making a Advertising sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Yellow Pages
Strengths of Yellow Pages | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Yellow Pages are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Yellow Pages has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Advertising industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Yellow Pages have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Yellow Pages 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Yellow Pages is one of the most innovative firm in Advertising sector.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Advertising industry
– Yellow Pages has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Yellow Pages to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Advertising industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Yellow Pages to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Yellow Pages in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Yellow Pages has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Yellow Pages to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Yellow Pages
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Yellow Pages does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Yellow Pages in Advertising industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Yellow Pages 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Yellow Pages comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Advertising 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Advertising industry
– Yellow Pages is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Yellow Pages has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Yellow Pages staying ahead in the Advertising industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to lead change in Advertising
– Yellow Pages is one of the leading players in the Advertising industry in Canada. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Advertising industry in Canada but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Yellow Pages in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Yellow Pages | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Yellow Pages are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Yellow Pages products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Yellow Pages needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Canada, Yellow Pages needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Yellow Pages is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Advertising industry, but Yellow Pages needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Yellow Pages to focus more on services in the Advertising industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Yellow Pages, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Advertising 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Yellow Pages 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Yellow Pages, in the dynamic environment of Advertising industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Yellow Pages has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Yellow Pages 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Yellow Pages is just above the Advertising 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Yellow Pages needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Advertising industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Yellow Pages can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Yellow Pages is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Yellow Pages has high operating costs in the Advertising industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Yellow Pages lucrative customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Yellow Pages has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Advertising industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Yellow Pages Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Yellow Pages are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Yellow Pages 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.
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. Yellow Pages can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Yellow Pages 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Yellow Pages can develop new processes and procedures in Advertising 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Yellow Pages can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Yellow Pages 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Yellow Pages 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 Advertising industry.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Advertising industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Yellow Pages can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Yellow Pages 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Yellow Pages 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 Yellow Pages to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Advertising industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Yellow Pages in the Advertising industry. Now Yellow Pages can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Yellow Pages is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Yellow Pages can utilize new technology in the field of Advertising industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Yellow Pages can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Advertising 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.
Threats Yellow Pages External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Yellow Pages are -
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. Yellow Pages needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Advertising 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 Yellow Pages in the Advertising sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Advertising industry are lowering. It can presents Yellow Pages with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Advertising sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Yellow Pages in Advertising industry. The Advertising 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Yellow Pages 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.
Environmental challenges
– Yellow Pages 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. Yellow Pages can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Advertising industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Yellow Pages 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 Yellow Pages prominent markets.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Advertising industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Yellow Pages can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Yellow Pages is facing in Advertising sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Yellow Pages
– 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 Yellow Pages.
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 Yellow Pages business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Yellow Pages has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Advertising industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Yellow Pages needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Advertising 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Yellow Pages Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Yellow Pages 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 Yellow Pages 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 Yellow Pages 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 Yellow Pages 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 Yellow Pages needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.