SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Fountaine Pajo (France)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Fountaine Pajo is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization, increasing energy prices, wage bills are increasing, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Fountaine Pajo can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Fountaine Pajo, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Fountaine Pajo 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 Fountaine Pajo can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Fountaine Pajo
2. Improving business portfolio management of Fountaine Pajo
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in France
4. Making a Recreational Products sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Fountaine Pajo
Strengths of Fountaine Pajo | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Fountaine Pajo are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Fountaine Pajo is one of the leading players in the Recreational Products industry in France. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in France. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- Fountaine Pajo 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 Fountaine Pajo is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Fountaine Pajo emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Fountaine Pajo is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Recreational Products industry. The technology infrastructure of France is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Organizational Resilience of Fountaine Pajo
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Fountaine Pajo does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Fountaine Pajo in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Fountaine Pajo has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Fountaine Pajo to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Recreational Products industry
– Fountaine Pajo has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Fountaine Pajo to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Recreational Products industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Fountaine Pajo to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Fountaine Pajo 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Recreational Products industry
– Fountaine Pajo is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Diverse revenue streams
– Fountaine Pajo is present in almost all the verticals within the Recreational Products industry. This has provided Fountaine Pajo 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.
Training and development
– Fountaine Pajo has one of the best training and development program in Consumer Cyclical 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Fountaine Pajo 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Fountaine Pajo has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Fountaine Pajo staying ahead in the Recreational Products industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Fountaine Pajo | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Fountaine Pajo are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Fountaine Pajo has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Recreational Products industry over the last five years. Fountaine Pajo 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of France, Fountaine Pajo needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Fountaine Pajo, in the dynamic environment of Recreational Products industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Fountaine Pajo has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Fountaine Pajo 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Fountaine Pajo strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Fountaine Pajo 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.
Skills based hiring in Recreational Products industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Fountaine Pajo 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.
High dependence on Fountaine Pajo ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Fountaine Pajo still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Recreational Products industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Fountaine Pajo has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Fountaine Pajo has some of the most successful models in the Recreational Products industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Fountaine Pajo should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
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 Fountaine Pajo supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Fountaine Pajo is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Fountaine Pajo vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Fountaine Pajo 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 Recreational Products industry using digital technology.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Fountaine Pajo is one of the leading players in the Recreational Products industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Recreational Products industry in last five years.
Fountaine Pajo Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Fountaine Pajo are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Fountaine Pajo is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Fountaine Pajo can utilize new technology in the field of Recreational Products 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 Fountaine Pajo 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 Fountaine Pajo to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Fountaine Pajo to increase its market reach. Fountaine Pajo will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Fountaine Pajo 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 Recreational Products industry.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Recreational Products industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Fountaine Pajo 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. Fountaine Pajo 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Fountaine Pajo 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Fountaine Pajo has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Recreational Products industry. This can help Fountaine Pajo to build a more holistic ecosystem for Fountaine Pajo products in the Recreational Products industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Fountaine Pajo 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Fountaine Pajo has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Recreational Products sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Fountaine Pajo to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Fountaine Pajo to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Fountaine Pajo 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 Fountaine Pajo to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Fountaine Pajo can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Recreational Products 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Fountaine Pajo can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Developing new processes and practices
– Fountaine Pajo can develop new processes and procedures in Recreational Products 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.
Threats Fountaine Pajo External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Fountaine Pajo are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Fountaine Pajo in Recreational Products industry. The Recreational Products 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Fountaine Pajo is facing in Recreational Products sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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. Fountaine Pajo 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, Fountaine Pajo 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 Fountaine Pajo prominent markets.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Recreational Products industry are lowering. It can presents Fountaine Pajo with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Recreational Products sector.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Fountaine Pajo 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 Recreational Products industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Fountaine Pajo 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 Recreational Products industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Fountaine Pajo 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 Recreational Products industry and other sectors.
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 Fountaine Pajo in the Recreational Products sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Fountaine Pajo business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Fountaine Pajo 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. Fountaine Pajo can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Recreational Products industry.
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 Fountaine Pajo Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Fountaine Pajo 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 Fountaine Pajo 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 Fountaine Pajo 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 Fountaine Pajo 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 Fountaine Pajo needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.