Swippii’s Strengths and Weaknesses
Swippii, a UK-based cash back application company, was selected as the focus of this study’s small and medium business case study. Located in Glasgow’s city centre, the firm is delivering customers the most convenient method to save money while also providing shops with an easy and automatic approach to sell their products. An in-depth analysis of Swippii’s strengths and weaknesses is included in the study, as well as the company’s growth and development plan. Also included in the study are a few final suggestions (Ghezzi and Cavallo, 2020). On the subject of the firm, the study discusses several aspects, including the kind of entrepreneur who founded it and its start-up procedures. In addition, it identifies the company’s idea and any competitive advantage, as well as the present level of spending and the competitive landscape. Also included is information about the company’s growth and development, as well as the obstacles of operating a firm.
It will also include information about the company’s start-up and any benefits it may have over its competitors in the present market. An in-depth review of the company’s current status and difficulties will be included in the report. For Swippii’s long-term success, the goal is to build a business plan that includes consideration of any government assistance measures that may be available. Swippii is a cash back app company that gives its clients’ money back for using the app (Swippii.com, 2022).
To learn more about Chitresh as an entrepreneur, I tried to reach out to him on social media and asked if he’d be willing to spend some time answering some of my questions about the project, I’m working on for Swippii. He agreed. When I called him to ask him a series of questions, he was pleasantly pleased and eager to assist. Chitresh struck me as a calm, collected combination of friendliness and competence. In an easy-to-understand, but authoritative, way, he shared his expertise and answered my questions about his company and industry (Edexlive.com UK, 2018).
In addition to achieving this aim, he understands that running a successful firm would fulfil his entrepreneurial spirit and his desire for success. He said that he had always wanted to start a firm and show off his entrepreneurial abilities. To him, he’s a one-of-a-kind combination of industry expertise, charisma, systematic approach, and inventiveness. For Chitresh, this proved that not all entrepreneurs have the same ambitions and that not all small enterprises are just focused on profit maximisation. Entrepreneurial personality qualities have been the subject of several research.
Chitresh’s lack of finances and lack of fundraising expertise made it difficult for him to get the seed money he needed to launch his business. When he started working from home in 2012, he set up his own business and began doing so. After struggling to make a go of things, he decided to put his thoughts down in writing so that he could better organise them and plan for the future.
Chitresh didn’t have to worry about finance since he had £250,000 in the company’s bank account from the start. He did, however, have to put his plan into action, which included engaging customers and reaching out to others in his network who were looking for permanently or temporarily employment (Adawiyah, 2021). With Lord Sugar’s support, he was able to get meetings and appointments with individuals in the sector, even if it was merely out of curiosity. In order to ‘ramp up’ the firm and attract top-notch candidates looking for new jobs, Chitresh knew he needed to recruit some “sales” workers. He could then place the suitable people to fill openings inside the businesses. Initially, employees were reluctant to join a new company and give up a safe employment at an established cashback rewards application corporation because of this. Indeed, Chitresh admitted that he had allowed Swippii’s initial workers to remain in their positions for much too long in the belief that they would improve. His mistakes were expensive and he realised the need to be more aggressive and acquire experienced employees. When drafting his company strategy, he kept this as a major concept and principle in mind (Liudmyla, 2020).
Swippii’s Founder and Start-up Procedures
The company’s founder thought that employees working on the cash back needed to be well-versed in the technological requirements of their clients. Chitresh believed that his background in biochemistry gave him an edge in his job since he was familiar with the individual needs of each of his customers. In his business, he decided that he would only hire people who were well-qualified and understood the needs of the industry, believing this would give his businesses a competitive edge and make it more attractive to job seekers as well as clients. His “lightbulb” moment came once he decided to do this.
As a result of this, Chitresh originally ignored his strong instincts and went on to recruit sales personnel, with the belief that they would learn the information through time, and the reason he did so was to save money. This was the first time he had ever made that mistake of judgement again. According to Chitresh, having Lord Sugar as a business associate and 50% stakeholder offers several benefits (Wismiarsi et.al., 2020). These factors allowed Chitresh to focus on niche markets as well as provide differentiation in the way Swippii provided services, and to begin working with companies to understand their future needs of the target market with the advancements in technology and novel treatments for disease.
In 2018, the UK economy reaped the benefits of nearly £35 billion in cash back applications, according to the latest figures. In 2018, the industry’s estimated market value was €473 billion, a 2% increase over the previous year. The greatest segment of the business is agency work, with the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom accounting for the majority of sales income (54 percent). The percentage of agency employees in Europe is greatest in the UK (3.4%), the Netherlands (3.3%), and France (2.9%), which all feature in the top 10 highest contract work penetration in the country (Mas et.al., 2020).
COVID-19 had a significant impact on the world this year. More than ever, the development of lifesaving technologies and drugs need the expertise of specialists in the biological sciences and related businesses.
Swippii’s growth may be evaluated in a variety of ways. Chitresh is extremely pleased with the progress made thus far. He was able to realise his ambition of financial stability thanks to Lord Sugar’s investment in Chitresh’s business. Since he won The Apprenticeship seven years ago, he’s become a very successful businessman. The values of the individual leader will be reflected in the business, which will reflect his own and his family’s goals. “Turnover is vanity, and profit is rationality,” as the saying goes. The success of a company should not be judged by a particular trading cycle. Many factors, many of which may be beyond the entrepreneur’s control, may cause a company’s fortunes to vary (Subekti et.al., 2020). An extended period of consistently increasing revenue, on the other hand, is an excellent sign of whether or not a firm is on the right track. To be sure the future planning and business group can support the anticipated expansion, it’s essential to keep an eye on rivals’ actions and the market as a whole as well.
Competitive Advantage and Present Level of Spending
The company has gone a long way in a short time, and although its financial performance has been impressive so far, Chitresh’s goals are to continue the expansion of the phase by applying market penetration via the creation of new offices in other areas around the United Kingdom.
For this purpose, Ansoff’s Matrix of development was created.
In addition to internal adjustments, Swippii has had to manage the process with other organisations that are also having to adapt and re-invent how they handle their own operations as a result of Swippii in relation to the existing market situation and products they are offering to their customers while opening new offices in UK. When it comes to Swippii’s market development, then it has been depicted that their market structure is very flat, with managers having a fair amount of control over both the people they hire and how they work with other departments within the company. The Swippii crew, on the other hand, has a high level of maturity and adaptability to focus more upon their diversification strategy and to reach out to the large number of customers (Corfe et.al., 2021). Even so, Chitresh has had his work cut out for him in terms of keeping things under control and maintaining a positive work environment. He’s had to devote more of his attention to dealing with the day-to-day than to planning for the future, so that they can develop their product in the market of UK.
The entrepreneur has shown he has the capacity to function effectively with satellite offices in various parts of Britain, which shows that Chitresh is a visionary business leader. On the heels of that notion, Chitresh plans additional expansions of its UK operations by opening new offices near businesses and research institutions, such as universities. However, he hasn’t approached any of the possible candidates he’s keeping an eye on. He thought that at a certain point in the future, this could be a good idea. Offices were crucial to the culture and productivity of businesses before to Covid-19, but after the epidemic, the proportion of company has dropped to 82% (Tanda and Schena, 2019).
“Remote working” has shown that technology, systems, and employees are ready to accept this new method to work in the near term. Long-term, Chitresh may have come to the conclusion that working in teams has actual advantages and that working alone has some negative “social wellness” elements. There is still a lot of room for development in Chitresh’s area of expertise, but he’s not going to stray from it. He was quite clear about this.
There are a few policies that the government uses to help small businesses. They assist to the development of the economy by creating employment. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for almost all businesses in the United Kingdom. They increase the level of competition among more established firms by offering customers better and more innovative goods and services. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face a number of unique challenges as a result of the ongoing negotiations over the United Kingdom’s future commercial relationship with the European Union (EU) (Anshari, 2021). There has been a significant increase in the number of small businesses in the United Kingdom. The number of people employed by small and medium-sized businesses increased by 10.4% between 2014 and 2018. Between 2017 and 2018, SME employment expanded by 1.2 percent, while SME value added climbed by 3.4 percent, which is similar to the 4 percent value-added growth in big companies. A 2.1 percent rise in SME employment between 2018 and 2020 is expected to result in the creation of about 228,400 new jobs in the SME sector by 2020. To put it another way, when Chitresh originally had the notion to start his own firm back in 2012, he knew very little about the many government assistance programmes available (YOUSSEF and NARASIMHAN, 2020). Chitresh accepts that he did not need any assistance from the government in order to begin his business enterprise thanks to Lord Sugar’s financing. Swippii’s solid financial situation has prevented the company, with the exception of a few furloughed employees and those on-the-job retention programme, from taking advantage of government initiatives for firms with revenues up to £75 million (Adamu and Stanton, 2022).
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it has been concluded that there can be no denying that the majority of new businesses fail within a few years of being established (Bureau of Labour). Since Chitresh’s inception, the company has seen uninterrupted development in both sales and profit. The road to success hasn’t been easy; there have been hiccups, missteps, and disappointments along the way. Clearly, the $250,000 prize money, Lord Sugar’s guidance, and the favourable exposure of winning the Apprentice all been useful. Despite the fact that these variables presented a huge potential for Swippii, the company still had to win business, attract and educate employees, and set up procedures and infrastructure. Swippii’s growth has also been characterised by a high level of employee loyalty. In the beginning, Chitresh made several bad personnel decisions and allowed them to remain in place for too long. Since then, he’s made it a priority to hire people with relevant expertise and to set up the necessary infrastructure so that they can do their jobs effectively. This is critical, since cash back application firms are notorious for having high levels of employee turnover.
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