Les verandas 4 saisons (MLV4S) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Les verandas 4 saisons (France)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Les verandas 4 saisons is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Les verandas 4 saisons
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Les verandas 4 saisons can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Les verandas 4 saisons, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Les verandas 4 saisons
2. Improving business portfolio management of Les verandas 4 saisons
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in France
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Les verandas 4 saisons
Strengths of Les verandas 4 saisons | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Les verandas 4 saisons are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Les verandas 4 saisons 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.
Training and development
– Les verandas 4 saisons has one of the best training and development program in 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.
Ability to lead change in
– Les verandas 4 saisons is one of the leading players in the industry in France. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in France but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Les verandas 4 saisons in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Les verandas 4 saisons is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Les verandas 4 saisons 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.
Learning organization
- Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Les verandas 4 saisons emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Les verandas 4 saisons 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 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Les verandas 4 saisons has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Les verandas 4 saisons staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Les verandas 4 saisons in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Les verandas 4 saisons has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Les verandas 4 saisons have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Les verandas 4 saisons digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Les verandas 4 saisons 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Les verandas 4 saisons 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Les verandas 4 saisons comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Weaknesses of Les verandas 4 saisons | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Les verandas 4 saisons are -
High dependence on Les verandas 4 saisons ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Les verandas 4 saisons still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Les verandas 4 saisons has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in France, Les verandas 4 saisons 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 industry.
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 Les verandas 4 saisons supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Les verandas 4 saisons is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Les verandas 4 saisons vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Les verandas 4 saisons has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Lack of clear differentiation of Les verandas 4 saisons products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Les verandas 4 saisons needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Les verandas 4 saisons 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Les verandas 4 saisons has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Les verandas 4 saisons 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, Les verandas 4 saisons needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Les verandas 4 saisons needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Les verandas 4 saisons can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Les verandas 4 saisons is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Les verandas 4 saisons has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Les verandas 4 saisons should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Les verandas 4 saisons 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.
Les verandas 4 saisons Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Les verandas 4 saisons are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Les verandas 4 saisons can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Les verandas 4 saisons 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Les verandas 4 saisons to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Les verandas 4 saisons can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Les verandas 4 saisons to build a more holistic ecosystem for Les verandas 4 saisons products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Les verandas 4 saisons can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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
– Les verandas 4 saisons has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Les verandas 4 saisons to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Les verandas 4 saisons 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, Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Les verandas 4 saisons 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. Les verandas 4 saisons 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Les verandas 4 saisons is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Les verandas 4 saisons can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, 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 Les verandas 4 saisons 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Les verandas 4 saisons can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Les verandas 4 saisons operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Threats Les verandas 4 saisons External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Les verandas 4 saisons are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Les verandas 4 saisons with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Les verandas 4 saisons 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 industry.
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 Les verandas 4 saisons business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Les verandas 4 saisons
– 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 Les verandas 4 saisons.
Environmental challenges
– Les verandas 4 saisons 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. Les verandas 4 saisons can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Les verandas 4 saisons 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 industry and other sectors.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Les verandas 4 saisons may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
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. Les verandas 4 saisons needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Les verandas 4 saisons 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Les verandas 4 saisons Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons 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 Les verandas 4 saisons needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
