AS Creation Tapeten (ACWNn) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Paper & Paper Products
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for AS Creation Tapeten (Germany)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , AS Creation Tapeten is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, 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,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of AS Creation Tapeten
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that AS Creation Tapeten can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the AS Creation Tapeten, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which AS Creation Tapeten 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 AS Creation Tapeten can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of AS Creation Tapeten
2. Improving business portfolio management of AS Creation Tapeten
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Germany
4. Making a Paper & Paper Products sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of AS Creation Tapeten
Strengths of AS Creation Tapeten | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of AS Creation Tapeten are -
Analytics focus
– AS Creation Tapeten 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 Paper & Paper Products 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.
Ability to lead change in Paper & Paper Products
– AS Creation Tapeten is one of the leading players in the Paper & Paper Products industry in Germany. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Paper & Paper Products industry in Germany but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled AS Creation Tapeten in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- AS Creation Tapeten 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 AS Creation Tapeten is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at AS Creation Tapeten emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the AS Creation Tapeten 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
– AS Creation Tapeten has one of the best training and development program in Basic Materials 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 AS Creation Tapeten in Paper & Paper Products industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– AS Creation Tapeten is one of the leading players in the Paper & Paper Products industry in Germany. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Germany. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Digital Transformation in Paper & Paper Products industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For AS Creation Tapeten digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. AS Creation Tapeten 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 brand equity
– AS Creation Tapeten has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled AS Creation Tapeten to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of AS Creation Tapeten comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Paper & Paper Products 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 Paper & Paper Products industry
– AS Creation Tapeten has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled AS Creation Tapeten to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Paper & Paper Products industry. The sustainable margins have also helped AS Creation Tapeten to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that AS Creation Tapeten 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.
Weaknesses of AS Creation Tapeten | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of AS Creation Tapeten are -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, AS Creation Tapeten 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, AS Creation Tapeten has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Paper & Paper Products industry over the last five years. AS Creation Tapeten 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As AS Creation Tapeten is one of the leading players in the Paper & Paper Products industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Paper & Paper Products industry in last five years.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Paper & Paper Products industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Germany, AS Creation Tapeten 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 Paper & Paper Products industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, AS Creation Tapeten 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 Paper & Paper Products industry using digital technology.
Lack of clear differentiation of AS Creation Tapeten products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, AS Creation Tapeten needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
AS Creation Tapeten has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Paper & Paper Products industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that AS Creation Tapeten needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Paper & Paper Products industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at AS Creation Tapeten can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as AS Creation Tapeten is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Germany, AS Creation Tapeten needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, AS Creation Tapeten has high operating costs in the Paper & Paper Products industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract AS Creation Tapeten lucrative customers.
High dependence on AS Creation Tapeten ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of AS Creation Tapeten still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Paper & Paper Products industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though AS Creation Tapeten has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
AS Creation Tapeten Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of AS Creation Tapeten are -
Buying journey improvements
– AS Creation Tapeten can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Paper & Paper Products industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– AS Creation Tapeten has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Paper & Paper Products sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled AS Creation Tapeten to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help AS Creation Tapeten to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– AS Creation Tapeten 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.
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 AS Creation Tapeten 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 Paper & Paper Products industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. AS Creation Tapeten 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. AS Creation Tapeten 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 AS Creation Tapeten 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 Paper & Paper Products industry.
Leveraging digital technologies
– AS Creation Tapeten 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for AS Creation Tapeten 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for AS Creation Tapeten 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 AS Creation Tapeten to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, AS Creation Tapeten can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that AS Creation Tapeten operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Paper & Paper Products sector.
Manufacturing automation
– AS Creation Tapeten can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Paper & Paper Products sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of AS Creation Tapeten has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Paper & Paper Products industry. This can help AS Creation Tapeten to build a more holistic ecosystem for AS Creation Tapeten products in the Paper & Paper Products industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, AS Creation Tapeten is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. AS Creation Tapeten can utilize new technology in the field of Paper & Paper Products industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats AS Creation Tapeten External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of AS Creation Tapeten are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, AS Creation Tapeten may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Paper & Paper Products sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for AS Creation Tapeten in Paper & Paper Products industry. The Paper & Paper Products industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, AS Creation Tapeten 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 AS Creation Tapeten prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on AS Creation Tapeten 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 Paper & Paper Products industry and other sectors.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that AS Creation Tapeten is facing in Paper & Paper Products sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. AS Creation Tapeten 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.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– AS Creation Tapeten has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Paper & Paper Products industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, AS Creation Tapeten needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Paper & Paper Products 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.
Regulatory challenges
– AS Creation Tapeten 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 Paper & Paper Products industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of AS Creation Tapeten
– 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 AS Creation Tapeten.
Environmental challenges
– AS Creation Tapeten 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. AS Creation Tapeten can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Paper & Paper Products industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Paper & Paper Products industry are lowering. It can presents AS Creation Tapeten with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Paper & Paper Products 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. AS Creation Tapeten needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Paper & Paper Products industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of AS Creation Tapeten Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at AS Creation Tapeten 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 AS Creation Tapeten 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 AS Creation Tapeten 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 AS Creation Tapeten 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 AS Creation Tapeten needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.