SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Redhill Education Ltd (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Redhill Education Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing energy prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Redhill Education Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Redhill Education Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Redhill Education Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Redhill Education Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Redhill Education Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Schools sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Redhill Education Ltd
Strengths of Redhill Education Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Redhill Education Ltd are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Redhill Education Ltd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Redhill Education Ltd 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
- Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Redhill Education Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Redhill Education Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Redhill Education Ltd staying ahead in the Schools industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Redhill Education Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Redhill Education Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in Schools industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Redhill Education Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Redhill Education Ltd 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Schools industry
– Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd in Schools industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Redhill Education Ltd 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.
High brand equity
– Redhill Education Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Redhill Education Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Redhill Education Ltd in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Redhill Education Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Redhill Education Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Redhill Education Ltd 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Redhill Education Ltd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Schools industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Redhill Education Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Redhill Education Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Redhill Education Ltd are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Schools industry, Redhill Education Ltd 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Redhill Education Ltd is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Redhill Education Ltd to provide better information regarding Schools products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Redhill Education Ltd needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ less understanding of Redhill Education Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Redhill Education Ltd 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Schools industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Redhill Education Ltd 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 Schools industry.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Redhill Education Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Schools industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Redhill Education Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Redhill Education Ltd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Schools industry, but Redhill Education Ltd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Redhill Education Ltd to focus more on services in the Schools industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Redhill Education Ltd 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 Schools industry using digital technology.
Lack of clear differentiation of Redhill Education Ltd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Redhill Education Ltd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Redhill Education Ltd has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Schools industry over the last five years. Redhill Education Ltd 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 dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Redhill Education Ltd supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Redhill Education Ltd is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Redhill Education Ltd vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Redhill Education Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Redhill Education Ltd are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Redhill Education Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Schools 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Redhill Education Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Schools 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Redhill Education Ltd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Schools industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Redhill Education Ltd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Schools industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Redhill Education Ltd 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. Redhill Education Ltd 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
– Redhill Education Ltd 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Schools industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Redhill Education Ltd in the Schools industry. Now Redhill Education Ltd can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Redhill Education Ltd 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, Redhill Education Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Redhill Education Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Schools sector.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Redhill Education Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Schools industry. This can help Redhill Education Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Redhill Education Ltd products in the Schools industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Redhill Education Ltd 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 Schools industry.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd.
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. Redhill Education Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Schools industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Redhill Education Ltd 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.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Redhill Education Ltd 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. Redhill Education Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Schools industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd prominent markets.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Redhill Education Ltd may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Schools sector.
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. Redhill Education Ltd 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.
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 Redhill Education Ltd in the Schools sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Redhill Education Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Schools industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Redhill Education Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Schools 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Redhill Education Ltd 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 Schools industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Redhill Education Ltd 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 Schools industry and other sectors.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Redhill Education Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd 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 Redhill Education Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
