Williams Grand Prix (WGF1G) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Recreational Activities
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Williams Grand Prix (Germany)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Williams Grand Prix is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Williams Grand Prix
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Williams Grand Prix can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Williams Grand Prix, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Williams Grand Prix 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 Williams Grand Prix can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Williams Grand Prix
2. Improving business portfolio management of Williams Grand Prix
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Germany
4. Making a Recreational Activities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Williams Grand Prix
Strengths of Williams Grand Prix | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Williams Grand Prix are -
Analytics focus
– Williams Grand Prix 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 Activities 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Williams Grand Prix in Recreational Activities industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Recreational Activities industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Williams Grand Prix digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Williams Grand Prix 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Williams Grand Prix has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Williams Grand Prix 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Williams Grand Prix is present in almost all the verticals within the Recreational Activities industry. This has provided Williams Grand Prix 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Williams Grand Prix has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Williams Grand Prix staying ahead in the Recreational Activities industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Williams Grand Prix has one of the best training and development program in Services 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Williams Grand Prix comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Recreational Activities 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Recreational Activities industry
– Williams Grand Prix has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Williams Grand Prix to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Recreational Activities industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Williams Grand Prix to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Williams Grand Prix 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.
Learning organization
- Williams Grand Prix 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 Williams Grand Prix is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Williams Grand Prix emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Williams Grand Prix has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Williams Grand Prix to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses of Williams Grand Prix | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Williams Grand Prix are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Williams Grand Prix is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Recreational Activities industry, but Williams Grand Prix needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Williams Grand Prix to focus more on services in the Recreational Activities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Williams Grand Prix is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Williams Grand Prix to provide better information regarding Recreational Activities products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Williams Grand Prix, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Recreational Activities 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.
High dependence on Williams Grand Prix ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Williams Grand Prix still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Recreational Activities industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Williams Grand Prix has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Williams Grand Prix 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Williams Grand Prix has some of the most successful models in the Recreational Activities industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Williams Grand Prix should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Lack of clear differentiation of Williams Grand Prix products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Williams Grand Prix needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Williams Grand Prix has high operating costs in the Recreational Activities industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Williams Grand Prix lucrative customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Recreational Activities industry, Williams Grand Prix 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, Williams Grand Prix 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 Activities industry over the last five years. Williams Grand Prix 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Williams Grand Prix 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 Activities industry using digital technology.
Williams Grand Prix Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Williams Grand Prix are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Williams Grand Prix can develop new processes and procedures in Recreational Activities 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Williams Grand Prix is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Williams Grand Prix can utilize new technology in the field of Recreational Activities industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Williams Grand Prix 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 Activities industry.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Williams Grand Prix 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 Williams Grand Prix to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Williams Grand Prix 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Williams Grand Prix can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Recreational Activities 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Recreational Activities industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Williams Grand Prix can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Recreational Activities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Williams Grand Prix 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. Williams Grand Prix 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Williams Grand Prix has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Recreational Activities industry. This can help Williams Grand Prix to build a more holistic ecosystem for Williams Grand Prix products in the Recreational Activities industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Williams Grand Prix has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Recreational Activities sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Williams Grand Prix to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Williams Grand Prix to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 Williams Grand Prix 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Williams Grand Prix 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 Williams Grand Prix to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Williams Grand Prix 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.
Threats Williams Grand Prix External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Williams Grand Prix are -
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 Williams Grand Prix in the Recreational Activities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Williams Grand Prix has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Recreational Activities industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Williams Grand Prix needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Recreational Activities 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.
Environmental challenges
– Williams Grand Prix 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. Williams Grand Prix can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Recreational Activities industry.
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. Williams Grand Prix 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Williams Grand Prix 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 Activities industry regulations.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Recreational Activities industry are lowering. It can presents Williams Grand Prix with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Recreational Activities 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. Williams Grand Prix needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Recreational Activities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Williams Grand Prix.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Williams Grand Prix 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Recreational Activities industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Williams Grand Prix can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Williams Grand Prix may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Recreational Activities sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Williams Grand Prix Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Williams Grand Prix 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 Williams Grand Prix 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 Williams Grand Prix 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 Williams Grand Prix 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 Williams Grand Prix needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.