Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Finance & Accounting
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation
In November 2008, Pacific Century CyberWorks ("PCCW"), a telecommunications giant in Hong Kong, became the subject of a privatization proposal. The proposed buyback of minority shares was offered by PCCW's substantial shareholders. Despite allegations of vote rigging faced by the joint offerers, the privatization proposal received the approval of stockholders in February 2009. This is a finance and corporate restructuring case that employs the discount cash flow model to ascertain the fair value of PCCW. The case also focuses on issues of corporate governance when a publicly traded company decides to go private.
Swot Analysis of "Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation" written by Hung Gay Fung, Gerald Yong Gao, Jot Yau, Zeba Khan includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Cyberworks Pccw facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Corporate governance, Economy, Financial analysis, Financial management and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation casestudy better are - – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, wage bills are increasing, increasing energy prices,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cyberworks Pccw, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cyberworks Pccw operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cyberworks Pccw
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Cyberworks Pccw
Strengths Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cyberworks Pccw in Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Cyberworks Pccw has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Cyberworks Pccw is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Learning organization
- Cyberworks Pccw is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Cyberworks Pccw is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Cyberworks Pccw is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Training and development
– Cyberworks Pccw has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Cyberworks Pccw are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Cyberworks Pccw has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Cyberworks Pccw in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High brand equity
– Cyberworks Pccw has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Cyberworks Pccw to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Cyberworks Pccw is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Strong track record of project management
– Cyberworks Pccw is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation, it seems that the employees of Cyberworks Pccw don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Lack of clear differentiation of Cyberworks Pccw products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Cyberworks Pccw needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Cyberworks Pccw has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Cyberworks Pccw has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Cyberworks Pccw is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Finance & Accounting segment. Cyberworks Pccw needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Cyberworks Pccw to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Cyberworks Pccw has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Cyberworks Pccw even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Cyberworks Pccw 's lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Finance & Accounting strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Cyberworks Pccw needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Cyberworks Pccw has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Cyberworks Pccw has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Opportunities Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation are -
Loyalty marketing
– Cyberworks Pccw has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Cyberworks Pccw to increase its market reach. Cyberworks Pccw will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Cyberworks Pccw can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Cyberworks Pccw in the consumer business. Now Cyberworks Pccw can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Cyberworks Pccw has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Cyberworks Pccw to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Cyberworks Pccw is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Cyberworks Pccw can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Finance & Accounting segment.
Buying journey improvements
– Cyberworks Pccw can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Cyberworks Pccw to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Developing new processes and practices
– Cyberworks Pccw can develop new processes and procedures in Finance & Accounting industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Finance & Accounting industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cyberworks Pccw can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Cyberworks Pccw can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Cyberworks Pccw to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Cyberworks Pccw has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Cyberworks Pccw to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation case study. Cyberworks Pccw can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation are -
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Cyberworks Pccw will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Finance & Accounting field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Cyberworks Pccw can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Cyberworks Pccw with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Cyberworks Pccw needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Cyberworks Pccw needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Cyberworks Pccw can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
Increasing wage structure of Cyberworks Pccw
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Cyberworks Pccw.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Cyberworks Pccw.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cyberworks Pccw is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Cyberworks Pccw in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Cyberworks Pccw can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation .
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation, Cyberworks Pccw may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Finance & Accounting .
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Cyberworks Pccw in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Cyberworks Pccw has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Finance & Accounting industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Cyberworks Pccw needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Finance & Accounting sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Pacific Century CyberWorks: The Road to Privatisation is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Cyberworks Pccw needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.