GreaterChina Professional Services (8193) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Investment Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for GreaterChina Professional Services (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , GreaterChina Professional Services is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of GreaterChina Professional Services
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that GreaterChina Professional Services can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the GreaterChina Professional Services, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which GreaterChina Professional Services 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 GreaterChina Professional Services can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of GreaterChina Professional Services
2. Improving business portfolio management of GreaterChina Professional Services
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Investment Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of GreaterChina Professional Services
Strengths of GreaterChina Professional Services | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of GreaterChina Professional Services are -
Diverse revenue streams
– GreaterChina Professional Services is present in almost all the verticals within the Investment Services industry. This has provided GreaterChina Professional Services 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– GreaterChina Professional Services is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry in Hong Kong. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Hong Kong. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the GreaterChina Professional Services 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– GreaterChina Professional Services has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Investment Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of GreaterChina Professional Services have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of GreaterChina Professional Services in Investment Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of GreaterChina Professional Services comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Investment Services 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Investment Services industry
– GreaterChina Professional Services has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled GreaterChina Professional Services to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Investment Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped GreaterChina Professional Services to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Investment Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For GreaterChina Professional Services digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. GreaterChina Professional Services has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
High brand equity
– GreaterChina Professional Services has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled GreaterChina Professional Services to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- GreaterChina Professional Services 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 GreaterChina Professional Services is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at GreaterChina Professional Services emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– GreaterChina Professional Services is one of the most innovative firm in Investment Services sector.
Strong track record of project management in the Investment Services industry
– GreaterChina Professional Services 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 of GreaterChina Professional Services | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of GreaterChina Professional Services are -
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of GreaterChina Professional Services supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, GreaterChina Professional Services is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left GreaterChina Professional Services vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Lack of clear differentiation of GreaterChina Professional Services products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, GreaterChina Professional Services needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
GreaterChina Professional Services has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Investment Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, GreaterChina Professional Services is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help GreaterChina Professional Services to provide better information regarding Investment Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of GreaterChina Professional Services is just above the Investment Services industry average. It 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, GreaterChina Professional Services needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that GreaterChina Professional Services needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Investment Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at GreaterChina Professional Services can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as GreaterChina Professional Services is planning to shift buying processes online.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of GreaterChina Professional Services, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Investment Services industry. 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.
Need for greater diversity
– GreaterChina Professional Services 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, GreaterChina Professional Services has high operating costs in the Investment Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract GreaterChina Professional Services lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring in Investment Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at GreaterChina Professional Services 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.
GreaterChina Professional Services Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of GreaterChina Professional Services are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– GreaterChina Professional Services has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Investment Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled GreaterChina Professional Services to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help GreaterChina Professional Services to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Investment Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. GreaterChina Professional Services can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects GreaterChina Professional Services can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– GreaterChina Professional Services can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Investment Services sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for GreaterChina Professional Services 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 GreaterChina Professional Services to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for GreaterChina Professional Services in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Investment Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at GreaterChina Professional Services 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 Investment Services industry.
Buying journey improvements
– GreaterChina Professional Services can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Investment Services industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– GreaterChina Professional Services can develop new processes and procedures in Investment Services 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for GreaterChina Professional Services 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, GreaterChina Professional Services is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. GreaterChina Professional Services can utilize new technology in the field of Investment Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
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. GreaterChina Professional Services can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, GreaterChina Professional Services can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that GreaterChina Professional Services operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Investment Services sector.
Threats GreaterChina Professional Services External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of GreaterChina Professional Services are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, GreaterChina Professional Services 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 GreaterChina Professional Services prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– GreaterChina Professional Services has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Investment Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, GreaterChina Professional Services needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Investment Services 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that GreaterChina Professional Services is facing in Investment Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
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. GreaterChina Professional Services 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.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of GreaterChina Professional Services business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for GreaterChina Professional Services in Investment Services industry. The Investment Services 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.
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 GreaterChina Professional Services.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, GreaterChina Professional Services may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Investment Services sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on GreaterChina Professional Services 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 Investment Services 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 GreaterChina Professional Services in the Investment Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– GreaterChina Professional Services 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 Investment Services industry.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of GreaterChina Professional Services Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at GreaterChina Professional 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 GreaterChina Professional 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 GreaterChina Professional 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 GreaterChina Professional Services 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 GreaterChina Professional Services needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.