Cewe Color (CWCG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Photography
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Cewe Color (Germany)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Cewe Color is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Cewe Color can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cewe Color, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Cewe Color
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cewe Color
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Germany
4. Making a Photography sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Cewe Color
Strengths of Cewe Color | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cewe Color are -
Organizational Resilience of Cewe Color
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Cewe Color does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Innovation driven organization
– Cewe Color is one of the most innovative firm in Photography sector.
High brand equity
– Cewe Color has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Cewe Color to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Cewe Color 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 Photography industry. The technology infrastructure of Germany 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Cewe Color in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Cewe Color has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Cewe Color to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Cewe Color has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Cewe Color 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
– Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color in Photography industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Photography
– Cewe Color is one of the leading players in the Photography industry in Germany. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Photography industry in Germany but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Cewe Color in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Cewe Color has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Photography industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Cewe Color have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Photography industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Cewe Color digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Cewe Color 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.
Weaknesses of Cewe Color | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Cewe Color are -
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 Cewe Color supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Cewe Color is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Cewe Color vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High dependence on Cewe Color ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Cewe Color still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Photography industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Cewe Color has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Cewe Color is one of the leading players in the Photography industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Photography industry in last five years.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Cewe Color has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Photography industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Cewe Color, in the dynamic environment of Photography industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Cewe Color has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Cewe Color, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Photography industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Cewe Color is just above the Photography 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Cewe Color is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Cewe Color to provide better information regarding Photography products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Cewe Color needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Photography industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Cewe Color can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Cewe Color is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Photography industry, Cewe Color 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Cewe Color 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 Photography industry using digital technology.
Cewe Color Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Cewe Color are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Cewe Color 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Photography industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cewe Color 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. Cewe Color 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Cewe Color 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 Photography industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Cewe Color in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Photography industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Developing new processes and practices
– Cewe Color can develop new processes and procedures in Photography 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Cewe Color has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Photography sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Cewe Color to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Cewe Color to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Cewe Color 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, Cewe Color can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Cewe Color operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Photography sector.
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 Cewe Color 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Cewe Color is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Cewe Color can utilize new technology in the field of Photography industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color 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
– Cewe Color can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Photography 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.
Threats Cewe Color External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Cewe Color are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Cewe Color 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 Photography industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Cewe Color in Photography industry. The Photography 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.
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 Cewe Color.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Photography industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Cewe Color can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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 Cewe Color in the Photography sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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. Cewe Color 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.
Environmental challenges
– Cewe Color 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. Cewe Color can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Photography industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cewe Color is facing in Photography sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Cewe Color 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.
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 Cewe Color business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cewe Color Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color 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 Cewe Color needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
