Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
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Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft
Discusses the plans of the Hong Kong government to seek approval of its proposal to replace the current Hong Kong ID card with a smart ID card. The approval in question is sought from the Hong Kong legislature. Introduces students to the reason behind the current ID card replacement in Hong Kong: the vulnerability of the current card to counterfeiting and the increased risk of identity theft in Hong Kong. Identity theft is a growing problem around the world and the fastest growing crime in the United States. Students are asked to suggest a list of criteria for Hong Kong's new ID card.
Swot Analysis of "Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft" written by Ali F. Farhoomand, Francois Roy includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Id Card facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft casestudy better are - – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing energy prices,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Id Card, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Id Card 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Id Card
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Global Business field.
4. Making a Global Business topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Id Card
Strengths Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Id Card in Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Id Card has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Id Card 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Id Card 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Global Business industry
– Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Id Card to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Global Business industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Id Card to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Id Card is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Id Card in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Id Card 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 Id Card is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Id Card has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Id Card has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Id Card has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Ability to lead change in Global Business field
– Id Card is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Id Card in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Id Card is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Id Card in the sector have low bargaining power. Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Id Card to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Id Card is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft 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 Id Card has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Id Card, firm in the HBR case study Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft, in the dynamic environment Id Card has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Id Card has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft, is just above the industry average. Id Card needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Id Card has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Id Card has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Id Card 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. Id Card 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Id Card 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Global Business 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Id Card 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.
Opportunities Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft | 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Id Card can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Id Card 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 Global Business segment.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Id Card in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Global Business segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– Id Card can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Id Card can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Id Card 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Id Card can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Id Card operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Global Business sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Id Card can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Id Card 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.
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 Id Card in the consumer business. Now Id Card can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Id Card can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Id Card 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Id Card to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Id Card to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Id Card to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft are -
Environmental challenges
– Id Card 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. Id Card can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Global Business industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Id Card can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Id Card 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Global Business field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Id Card can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Id Card is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Id Card
– 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 Id Card.
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 Id Card.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Id Card high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Id Card with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Id Card demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
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 Id Card in the Global Business sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft, Id Card may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Global Business .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft 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 Replacing Hong Kong's ID Card (A): Fighting Identity Theft 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 Id Card needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
