Cognex Corporation SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Cognex Corporation is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Cognex Corporation maintains its dominant 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 organization such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.


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The SWOT Analysis framework helps 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 Cognex Corporation 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 a firm can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Cognex Corporation strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Cognex Corporation SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Cognex Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, Cognex Corporation 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 Cognex Corporation are –

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• Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Cognex Corporation has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Cognex Corporation has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Cognex Corporation just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• 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.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – Cognex Corporation 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.
• Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Cognex Corporation is investing huge resources in training and development of its employees resulting in a workforce that is not only highly skilled but also motivated to achieve more.
• 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.

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Weakness of Cognex Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Cognex Corporation 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.

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• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Cognex Corporation are below the industry average.
• 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. Cognex Corporation has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
• 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.
• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Cognex Corporation 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.
• There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market.
• Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Cognex Corporation is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Cognex Corporation is spending above the industry average on Research and Development, it has not been able to compete with the leading players in the industry in terms of innovation. It has come across as a mature firm looking forward to bring out products based on tested features in the market.

Opportunities for Cognex Corporation – External Strategic Factors

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• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Cognex Corporation . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• 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 Cognex Corporation 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 Cognex Corporation in other product categories.
• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Cognex Corporation.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Cognex Corporation to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Cognex Corporation 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.
• Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.
• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Cognex Corporation to increase its profitability.

Threats Cognex Corporation Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Cognex Corporation
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Cognex Corporation profitability.
• New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
• Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
• Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Cognex Corporation   in those markets.
• 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.
• New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Cognex Corporation

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 Cognex Corporation
• 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cognex Corporation

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 Cognex Corporation 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 Cognex Corporation

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

You can email us to get an example document of Weighted SWOT analysis.

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)