Insight Enterprises SWOT Analysis / Matrix

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SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by Insight Enterprises managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is an important technique to evalauate the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Insight Enterprises is facing in its current business environment.

The Insight Enterprises is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Insight Enterprises maintains its prominent position in market by critically analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis.  SWOT analysis a highly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the organization such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.

The SWOT Analysis framework facilitates an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Insight Enterprises to develop four types of strategies:

• SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
• WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
• ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
•  WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The main purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Insight Enterprises strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Insight Enterprises SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Insight Enterprises – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, Insight Enterprises has numerous strengths that help it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of Insight Enterprises are –

• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Insight Enterprises has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Insight Enterprises just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Insight Enterprises has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – Insight Enterprises has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. The expansion has helped the organization to build new revenue stream and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets it operates in.
• Successful track record of integrating complimentary firms through mergers & acquisition. It has successfully integrated number of technology companies in the past few years to streamline its operations and to build a reliable supply chain.
• High level of customer satisfaction – the company with its dedicated customer relationship management department has able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction among present customers and good brand equity among the potential customers.
• Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.

Weakness of Insight Enterprises – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Insight Enterprises can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a company can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

• Financial planning is not done properly and efficiently. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios suggest that the company can use the cash more efficiently than what it is doing at present.
• Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Insight Enterprises is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
• Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
• The marketing of the products left a lot to be desired. Even though the product is a success in terms of sale but its positioning and unique selling proposition is not clearly defined which can lead to the attacks in this segment from the competitors.
• The company has not being able to tackle the challenges present by the new entrants in the segment and has lost small market share in the niche categories. Insight Enterprises has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
• Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of Insight Enterprises
• Not very good at product demand forecasting leading to higher rate of missed opportunities compare to its competitors. One of the reason why the days inventory is high compare to its competitors is that Insight Enterprises is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.

Opportunities for Insight Enterprises – External Strategic Factors

• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Insight Enterprises to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Insight Enterprises . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Insight Enterprises to increase its profitability.
• New environmental policies – The new opportunities will create a level playing field for all the players in the industry. It represent a great opportunity for Insight Enterprises to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
• Stable free cash flow provides opportunities to invest in adjacent product segments. With more cash in bank the company can invest in new technologies as well as in new products segments. This should open a window of opportunity for Insight Enterprises in other product categories.
• Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Insight Enterprises products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Insight Enterprises to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. It will enable the firm to maintain its loyal customers with great service and lure new customers through other value oriented propositions.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Insight Enterprises an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.

Threats Insight Enterprises Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Liability laws in different countries are different and Insight Enterprises may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
• Intense competition – Stable profitability has increased the number of players in the industry over last two years which has put downward pressure on not only profitability but also on overall sales.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Insight Enterprises
• New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• The demand of the highly profitable products is seasonal in nature and any unlikely event during the peak season may impact the profitability of the company in short to medium term.
• Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Insight Enterprises’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
• No regular supply of innovative products – Over the years the company has developed numerous products but those are often response to the development by other players. Secondly the supply of new products is not regular thus leading to high and low swings in the sales number over period of time.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Insight Enterprises

Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.

• Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
• SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
• The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of Insight Enterprises
• SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
• SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.

Weighted SWOT Analysis of Insight Enterprises

In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.

This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis Insight Enterprises managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.

Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of Insight Enterprises

This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.

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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

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SWOT Worksheet & Template

If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.

References / Citations & Bibliography

• M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
• A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
• O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
• L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
• R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)