University Assignment: JD Sports SWOT and Operational Impact Report

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of JD Sports, focusing on its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) within the global business environment. The report begins with an introduction to SWOT analysis as a tool for assessing a company's current position and strategic decision-making. It then delves into a detailed SWOT analysis of JD Sports, examining its legal compliance, strong supply chain, financial challenges, use of older technology, new market opportunities, benefits from BREXIT, and the need to adapt to new technologies. The operational impact analysis explores how these SWOT aspects affect JD Sports' marketing and human resource management, including marketing strategies, digital marketing, recruitment, training, and employee management. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of SWOT analysis for understanding internal competencies and operational analysis for aligning efforts to achieve market prominence, as well as the importance of the business adapting to market trends.

Global Business Environment
CW 2

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
PORTFOLIO PAPER 2...................................................................................................................3
SWOT Analysis......................................................................................................................3
PORTFOLIO PAPER 3...................................................................................................................5
Operational Impact Analysis..................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
SWOT analysis is simple and common tool for any organization to assess current
position of its Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and threats before making any decision or
forming any new strategy. Operational Impact Analysis is a process that helps in identifying
and measuring impacts of various decisions and factors on business resilience and continuity of
business operations. This report is providing in-depth analysis of SWOT and operational impact
in respect of JD sports.
PORTFOLIO PAPER 2
SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is simple and common tool for any organization to assess current position of its
Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and threats before making any decision or forming any new
strategy. It can be used to assess these aspects from the above PESTEL analysis. If this is done
adequately, it can benefit business in getting competitive edge over its competitors. Below
given is the SWOT study for JD sports based on PESTEL research:
Strengths
These are the aspects which denote the areas where organization is doing particularly well and
gives competitive edge over competitors. Below mentioned are some of the strengths of JD
sports:
 Legal Compliance: They are aware of all the major legal compliances as mentioned
in political factor of PESTEL analysis and are compliant to all those applicability’s.
 Strong Supply Chain: The supply chain of JD sports is also strong and vast which
provides them larger options and reflects a strong supply chain.
Weakness
Weakness reflects the pain points of an organization. Companies might shy in hearing this, but
SWOT analysis is most helpful if weaknesses are listened and worked upon. JD Sports too have
some of this as highlighted below:

 Improper Finances: As part of responsibility towards environment, JD sports are
directing towards renewable energy, but it causes huge losses to them as they are not
blessed with proper finances to bear the cost of same.
 Old Technology: The world is moving towards advanced technology with speed, but
JD sport is not yet gathered with all the latest technologies and are using number of old
technologies which contains risk of being outrun by competitors (Comino and Ferretti,
2016).
Opportunities
This denotes the areas and factors providing opportunity for business to grow further and
expand to more geographical boundaries. Some of the hopeful opportunities for JD sports are as
follows:
 New Markets: As given in social factors of above given PESTEL analysis, as the trends
and season are changing, JD sports has opportunity to analyse those new trends and
adapt to same and expand themselves to further new geographical boundaries.
 BREXIT Agreement: It is an opportunity for JD Sports that its competitors may
decline who are part of EU. It can help them grow and establish themselves with
additional customer base.
 Adapt to New Technology: As they are currently not using much advanced technology,
there is an opportunity for JD Sports to update their technology to get competitive edge.
It will ultimately improve their operational effectiveness and profitability.
Threats
Threats are those events that might occur in near future and cause financial and non-financial
losses to business. As provided in PESTEL analysis, below given are some of the threats to JD
Sports:
 Non-adoption to latest trends: As the trends is dynamic in market, JD sports must
keep themselves updated otherwise there is a threat that their products might turn
outdated.

 Non-Compliance of legal requirements: It is mandatory to comply with all applicable
laws. If not complied, JD sports may face threats of various legal consequences as result
of those non-compliances.
PORTFOLIO PAPER 3
Operational Impact Analysis
This process helps in identifying and measuring impacts of various decisions and factors on
business resilience and continuity of business operations. After understanding the SWOT
aspects, it is important for JD sports to study the impact of those aspects on its operations and
activities. Below given is some of the operational impact analysis based on SWOT aspects
listed above:
 Marketing : Functions of Marketing department can be affected If JD Sports effectively
grab the available opportunities in market and provide required base to it by adequate
marketing and finance, it can assist them in expanding their business operations to new
markets and also new customers by reaching mass number of population through
effective marketing strategy and execution. The marketing efforts and cost for JD Sports
might increase (Schwarz, Hall and Shibli, 2019). They must form a skilled and
specialised team of marketing which would start with formulating relevant marketing
strategies and tools that can be used by them on various marketing platforms like Social
Media, Television, Newspaper, Online etc. One of the latest concepts which have to be
adapted by them is digital marketing but the same can be successfully accomplished
only if they update themselves with updated and advanced technologies which will
assist their Marketing department in reaching mass number of population in any part of
the world in most effective manner.
 Human Resource Management: HRM is provided with responsibility to fulfil all the
resource related needs of various departments as per their requirements. They conduct
various activities such as Recruitment, Training, Employee Management, Formulation
of various employee associated organizational policies etc. If the above described
SWOT analysis is as mentioned and JD Sports is successful in establishing themselves
in new markets, role of HRM will increase as the business will expand new employees

with various skills will be required for various job roles by various departments i.e.
Marketing, Operations, Finance etc. They will be responsible to analyse and gather the
requirements for skill and education for job positions in different departments and based
upon that the recruitment process must be initiated by them. Once the employees with
relevant skills for job roles are recruited the HRM must organize and conduct the
training of those new recruits and make sure that new employees are provided with all
required guidance and training. This must be effectively carried to make sure that all the
goals and objectives are accomplished by JD Sports.
CONCLUSION
From the above mentioned report this can be analysed that with the help of SWOT
analysis internal competencies of the business can be examined which can be used for gaining
success over organisational objectives. Whereas with the help of operational analysis efficacy
of internal processes can be examined so that overall efforts can be aligned with gaining market
prominence.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Comino, E. and Ferretti, V., 2016. Indicators-based spatial SWOT analysis: Supporting the
strategic planning and management of complex territorial systems. Ecological
Indicators, 60, pp.1104-1117.
Schwarz, E.C., Hall, S.A. and Shibli, S., 2019. Sport facility operations management: A global
perspective. Routledge.