Case Study Description of Lan-Ray Global Payment Services
Lan-Ray in Singapore attempted to break into the prepaid cash card (PCC) business in China. Equity funds were sourced to acquire Protection Communications Network (PCN), a payment intermediary in Quanzhou, China, with a vast payment network, which could be instrumental to the success of the PCC business. However, PCN would need to demonstrate profitability before they could obtain the licence to run the PCC business. Together, Lan-Ray and PCN ventured into the mobile phone campus e-card business, which was initially assessed to be able to help PCN achieve profitability in the short run. However, the campus e-card business did not prove to be as profitable as expected. At the same time, the acquisition of PCN by Lan-Ray hit a road block as PCN was unwilling to transfer shares to Lan-Ray.
Swot Analysis of "Lan-Ray Global Payment Services" written by Wee Yong Yeo includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Pcn Lan facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Lan-Ray Global Payment Services case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Financial management, International business, Leadership, Organizational culture, Strategy and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Lan-Ray Global Payment Services casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, wage bills are increasing,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Lan-Ray Global Payment Services
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Lan-Ray Global Payment Services case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pcn Lan, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pcn Lan 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Lan-Ray Global Payment Services case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pcn Lan
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Pcn Lan
Strengths Lan-Ray Global Payment Services | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pcn Lan in Lan-Ray Global Payment Services Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Pcn Lan is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Lan-Ray Global Payment Services are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management
– Pcn Lan is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Organizational Resilience of Pcn Lan
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Pcn Lan does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Pcn Lan has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Pcn Lan to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Pcn Lan 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Pcn Lan 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Analytics focus
– Pcn Lan is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Wee Yong Yeo can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Pcn Lan has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Pcn Lan 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.
Learning organization
- Pcn Lan 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 Pcn Lan is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Lan-Ray Global Payment Services Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Lan-Ray Global Payment Services firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Pcn Lan to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Pcn Lan to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Training and development
– Pcn Lan has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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.
Weaknesses Lan-Ray Global Payment Services | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Lan-Ray Global Payment Services are -
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Lan-Ray Global Payment Services, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Lan-Ray Global Payment Services, in the dynamic environment Pcn Lan has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Pcn Lan has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Pcn Lan 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Lan-Ray Global Payment Services, is just above the industry average. Pcn Lan 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Pcn Lan is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Pcn Lan needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Pcn Lan to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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 Pcn Lan has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Pcn Lan has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Pcn Lan 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Lan-Ray Global Payment Services that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Lan-Ray Global Payment Services can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Pcn Lan is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Pcn Lan 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Lan-Ray Global Payment Services, it seems that the employees of Pcn Lan 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.
Opportunities Lan-Ray Global Payment Services | 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services are -
Buying journey improvements
– Pcn Lan can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Pcn Lan can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Pcn Lan is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Pcn Lan 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Pcn Lan in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Pcn Lan 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. Pcn Lan 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.
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 Pcn Lan in the consumer business. Now Pcn Lan can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Pcn Lan can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Pcn Lan 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Pcn Lan to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Pcn Lan 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Pcn Lan can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Pcn Lan operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Pcn Lan 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Pcn Lan can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People 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.
Threats Lan-Ray Global Payment Services External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Lan-Ray Global Payment Services are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Pcn Lan 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.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Pcn Lan 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Pcn Lan with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Environmental challenges
– Pcn Lan 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. Pcn Lan can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Lan-Ray Global Payment Services, Pcn Lan may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
Consumer confidence and its impact on Pcn Lan 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.
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. Pcn Lan 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.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Pcn Lan can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Pcn Lan 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.
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. Pcn Lan needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Pcn Lan in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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 Lan-Ray Global Payment Services 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 Pcn Lan needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.