SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Fiducial Office (France)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Fiducial Office is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Fiducial Office can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Fiducial Office, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Fiducial Office 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 Fiducial Office can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Fiducial Office
2. Improving business portfolio management of Fiducial Office
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in France
4. Making a Office Equipment sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Fiducial Office
Strengths of Fiducial Office | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Fiducial Office are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Fiducial Office is one of the leading players in the Office Equipment 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Fiducial Office has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Office Equipment industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Fiducial Office have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Fiducial Office 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
– Fiducial Office has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Fiducial Office to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Fiducial Office is present in almost all the verticals within the Office Equipment industry. This has provided Fiducial Office 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Fiducial Office 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Fiducial Office has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Fiducial Office 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.
Training and development
– Fiducial Office 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Fiducial Office in Office Equipment industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management in the Office Equipment industry
– Fiducial Office is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Office Equipment industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Fiducial Office digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Fiducial Office 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Office Equipment industry
– Fiducial Office has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Fiducial Office to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Office Equipment industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Fiducial Office to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses of Fiducial Office | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Fiducial Office are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Fiducial Office is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Fiducial Office to provide better information regarding Office Equipment products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Fiducial Office 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 Office Equipment industry using digital technology.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Fiducial Office is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Office Equipment industry, but Fiducial Office needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Fiducial Office to focus more on services in the Office Equipment industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Fiducial Office has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Office Equipment industry over the last five years. Fiducial Office 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Fiducial Office has high operating costs in the Office Equipment industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Fiducial Office lucrative customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Fiducial Office has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Office Equipment 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 Fiducial Office has some of the most successful models in the Office Equipment industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Fiducial Office should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Fiducial Office needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Office Equipment industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Fiducial Office can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Fiducial Office is planning to shift buying processes online.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Fiducial Office, in the dynamic environment of Office Equipment industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Fiducial Office has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Skills based hiring in Office Equipment industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Fiducial Office 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of France, Fiducial Office needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Fiducial Office Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Fiducial Office are -
Buying journey improvements
– Fiducial Office can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Office Equipment 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Fiducial Office 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 Office Equipment industry.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Fiducial Office 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Fiducial Office 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Fiducial Office has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Office Equipment industry. This can help Fiducial Office to build a more holistic ecosystem for Fiducial Office products in the Office Equipment industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Fiducial Office 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. Fiducial Office can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Fiducial Office is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Fiducial Office can utilize new technology in the field of Office Equipment industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Office Equipment industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Fiducial Office can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Fiducial Office 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 Fiducial Office to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Fiducial Office 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 Office Equipment industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Fiducial Office 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. Fiducial Office 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Fiducial Office can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Fiducial Office External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Fiducial Office are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Fiducial Office 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 Office Equipment industry and other sectors.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Fiducial Office 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 Fiducial Office prominent markets.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Fiducial Office may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Office Equipment sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Fiducial Office in Office Equipment industry. The Office Equipment 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
– Fiducial Office has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Office Equipment industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Fiducial Office needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Office Equipment 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.
Increasing wage structure of Fiducial Office
– 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 Fiducial Office.
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. Fiducial Office needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Office Equipment industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Fiducial Office 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. Fiducial Office can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Office Equipment industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Fiducial Office 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Fiducial Office 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 Office Equipment industry regulations.
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 Fiducial Office in the Office Equipment sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Fiducial Office.
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. Fiducial Office 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Fiducial Office Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Fiducial Office 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 Fiducial Office 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 Fiducial Office 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 Fiducial Office 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 Fiducial Office needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
