SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Qorvo Inc (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Qorvo Inc is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Qorvo Inc can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Qorvo Inc, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Qorvo Inc 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 Qorvo Inc can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Qorvo Inc
2. Improving business portfolio management of Qorvo Inc
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Semiconductors sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Qorvo Inc
Strengths of Qorvo Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Qorvo Inc are -
Organizational Resilience of Qorvo Inc
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Qorvo Inc does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Semiconductors industry
– Qorvo Inc has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Qorvo Inc to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Semiconductors industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Qorvo Inc to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Qorvo Inc comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Semiconductors 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.
Training and development
– Qorvo Inc has one of the best training and development program in Technology 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.
Learning organization
- Qorvo Inc 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 Qorvo Inc is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Qorvo Inc emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Semiconductors
– Qorvo Inc is one of the leading players in the Semiconductors industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Semiconductors industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Qorvo Inc in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Qorvo Inc 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Qorvo Inc in Semiconductors industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Qorvo Inc has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Semiconductors industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Qorvo Inc have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Qorvo Inc is one of the most innovative firm in Semiconductors sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Qorvo Inc has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Qorvo Inc staying ahead in the Semiconductors industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Qorvo Inc is present in almost all the verticals within the Semiconductors industry. This has provided Qorvo Inc 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.
Weaknesses of Qorvo Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Qorvo Inc are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Qorvo Inc products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Qorvo Inc needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on Qorvo Inc ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Qorvo Inc still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Semiconductors industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Qorvo Inc has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Qorvo Inc 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Qorvo Inc needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Qorvo Inc is one of the leading players in the Semiconductors industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Semiconductors industry in last five years.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Qorvo Inc is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Semiconductors industry, but Qorvo Inc needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Qorvo Inc to focus more on services in the Semiconductors industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Skills based hiring in Semiconductors industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Qorvo Inc 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Qorvo Inc is just above the Semiconductors 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Semiconductors industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Qorvo Inc 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 Semiconductors industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Qorvo Inc needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Semiconductors industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Qorvo Inc can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Qorvo Inc is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Qorvo Inc has high operating costs in the Semiconductors industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Qorvo Inc lucrative customers.
Qorvo Inc Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Qorvo Inc are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Semiconductors industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Qorvo Inc 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. Qorvo Inc 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Qorvo Inc 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.
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 Qorvo Inc 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Qorvo Inc can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Qorvo Inc can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Semiconductors 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Qorvo Inc has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Semiconductors sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Qorvo Inc to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Qorvo Inc to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Qorvo Inc 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, Qorvo Inc is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Qorvo Inc can utilize new technology in the field of Semiconductors industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Qorvo Inc 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 Qorvo Inc to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Qorvo Inc 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 Qorvo Inc to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Qorvo Inc in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Semiconductors industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Qorvo Inc can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Qorvo Inc operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Semiconductors sector.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Qorvo Inc has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Semiconductors industry. This can help Qorvo Inc to build a more holistic ecosystem for Qorvo Inc products in the Semiconductors industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Qorvo Inc External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Qorvo Inc 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. Qorvo Inc needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Semiconductors industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Semiconductors industry are lowering. It can presents Qorvo Inc with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Semiconductors 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 Qorvo Inc business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Qorvo Inc 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Qorvo Inc 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 Qorvo Inc prominent markets.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Qorvo Inc in Semiconductors industry. The Semiconductors 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Qorvo Inc has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Semiconductors industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Qorvo Inc needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Semiconductors 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Qorvo Inc is facing in Semiconductors sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Qorvo Inc 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.
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 Qorvo Inc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Qorvo Inc 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 Semiconductors industry and other sectors.
Regulatory challenges
– Qorvo Inc 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 Semiconductors industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Qorvo Inc 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 Semiconductors industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Qorvo Inc Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Qorvo Inc 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 Qorvo Inc 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 Qorvo Inc 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 Qorvo Inc 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 Qorvo Inc needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
