Mcrae Inds Cl A (MCRAA) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Footwear
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Mcrae Inds Cl A (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Mcrae Inds Cl A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing commodity prices,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Mcrae Inds Cl A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mcrae Inds Cl A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Mcrae Inds Cl A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mcrae Inds Cl A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Footwear sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Mcrae Inds Cl A
Strengths of Mcrae Inds Cl A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mcrae Inds Cl A are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Mcrae Inds Cl A is one of the leading players in the Footwear 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Mcrae Inds Cl A comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Footwear 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Mcrae Inds Cl A has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Mcrae Inds Cl A has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Footwear industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Mcrae Inds Cl A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Footwear industry
– Mcrae Inds Cl A has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Mcrae Inds Cl A to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Footwear industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Mcrae Inds Cl A to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High brand equity
– Mcrae Inds Cl A has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Mcrae Inds Cl A to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Mcrae Inds Cl A is present in almost all the verticals within the Footwear industry. This has provided Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Mcrae Inds Cl A in Footwear industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Mcrae Inds Cl A emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Mcrae Inds Cl A in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Mcrae Inds Cl A has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Mcrae Inds Cl A to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Weaknesses of Mcrae Inds Cl A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Mcrae Inds Cl A are -
Need for greater diversity
– Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A, in the dynamic environment of Footwear industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Mcrae Inds Cl A has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Mcrae Inds Cl A, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Footwear 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.
High dependence on Mcrae Inds Cl A ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Mcrae Inds Cl A still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Footwear industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Mcrae Inds Cl A has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Mcrae Inds Cl A needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Mcrae Inds Cl A is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Mcrae Inds Cl A to provide better information regarding Footwear products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Mcrae Inds Cl A has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Footwear industry over the last five years. Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Mcrae Inds Cl A has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Footwear industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Mcrae Inds Cl A has some of the most successful models in the Footwear industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Mcrae Inds Cl A should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Mcrae Inds Cl A is just above the Footwear 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Footwear industry using digital technology.
Mcrae Inds Cl A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Mcrae Inds Cl A are -
Manufacturing automation
– Mcrae Inds Cl A can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Footwear 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Mcrae Inds Cl A can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Mcrae Inds Cl A operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Footwear 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Footwear industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Mcrae Inds Cl A 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. Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Mcrae Inds Cl A can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Footwear 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Mcrae Inds Cl A is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Mcrae Inds Cl A can utilize new technology in the field of Footwear industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Mcrae Inds Cl A has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Footwear industry. This can help Mcrae Inds Cl A to build a more holistic ecosystem for Mcrae Inds Cl A products in the Footwear industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Mcrae Inds Cl A in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Footwear industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Footwear industry.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Threats Mcrae Inds Cl A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Mcrae Inds Cl A are -
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 Mcrae Inds Cl A in the Footwear sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Mcrae Inds Cl A 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. Mcrae Inds Cl A can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Footwear industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Footwear industry.
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. Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Mcrae Inds Cl A 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Mcrae Inds Cl A may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Footwear sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Mcrae Inds Cl A is facing in Footwear sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Footwear industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Mcrae Inds Cl A can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Footwear industry are lowering. It can presents Mcrae Inds Cl A with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Footwear sector.
Increasing wage structure of Mcrae Inds Cl A
– 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Mcrae Inds Cl A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A 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 Mcrae Inds Cl A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.