Apollo Education Group SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Apollo Education Group managers to do a situational analysis of the company . It is a useful technique to analyze the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Apollo Education Group is facing in its current business environment.

The Apollo Education Group is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Apollo Education Group maintains its prominent position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis.  SWOT analysis a highly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the company 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 known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Apollo Education Group 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 core purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a company can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Apollo Education Group strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Apollo Education Group SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Apollo Education Group – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Apollo Education Group has numerous strengths that enable 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 Apollo Education Group are –

• 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.
• 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.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Apollo Education Group has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Apollo Education Group just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• 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.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Apollo Education Group has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
• Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Apollo Education Group is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
• Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.

Weakness of Apollo Education Group – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Apollo Education Group can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a firm can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

• 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 Apollo Education Group is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Apollo Education Group needs to put more money in technology to integrate the processes across the board. Right now the investment in technologies is not at par with the vision of the company.
• High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Apollo Education Group has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
• Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Apollo Education Group is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
• 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.
• 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 Apollo Education Group
• Limited success outside core business – Even though Apollo Education Group is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.

Opportunities for Apollo Education Group – External Strategic Factors

• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Apollo Education Group to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• 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 Apollo Education Group to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Apollo Education Group to increase its profitability.
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Apollo Education Group . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Apollo Education Group 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.
• Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Apollo Education Group products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
• New customers from online channel – Over the past few years the company has invested vast sum of money into the online platform. This investment has opened new sales channel for Apollo Education Group. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Apollo Education Group an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.

Threats Apollo Education Group Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
• New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
• Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Apollo Education Group   in those markets.
• The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Apollo Education Group
• 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.
• As the company is operating in numerous countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in number of markets across the world.
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Apollo Education Group profitability.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Apollo Education Group

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 Apollo Education Group
• 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 Apollo Education Group

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 Apollo Education Group 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 Apollo Education Group

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)