Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Northia Strategic Holdings is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Northia Strategic Holdings
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Northia Strategic Holdings can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Northia Strategic Holdings, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Northia Strategic Holdings can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Northia Strategic Holdings
2. Improving business portfolio management of Northia Strategic Holdings
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Semiconductors sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Northia Strategic Holdings
Strengths of Northia Strategic Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Northia Strategic Holdings are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
Analytics focus
– Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Semiconductors industry. The technology infrastructure of Hong Kong is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Northia Strategic Holdings has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Northia Strategic Holdings staying ahead in the Semiconductors industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Northia Strategic Holdings comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Semiconductors 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
- Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Northia Strategic Holdings is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Northia Strategic Holdings emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Northia Strategic Holdings in Semiconductors industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Northia Strategic Holdings has one of the best training and development program in Technology industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – 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
– Northia Strategic Holdings has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
Organizational Resilience of Northia Strategic Holdings
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Northia Strategic Holdings does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management in the Semiconductors industry
– Northia Strategic Holdings is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Northia Strategic Holdings is one of the most innovative firm in Semiconductors sector.
Weaknesses of Northia Strategic Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Northia Strategic Holdings are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Northia Strategic Holdings has high operating costs in the Semiconductors industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Northia Strategic Holdings lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Northia Strategic Holdings is one of the leading players in the Semiconductors industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Semiconductors industry in last five years.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Northia Strategic Holdings has some of the most successful models in the Semiconductors industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Northia Strategic Holdings should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Lack of clear differentiation of Northia Strategic Holdings products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Northia Strategic Holdings needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Northia Strategic Holdings needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Semiconductors industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Northia Strategic Holdings can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Northia Strategic Holdings is planning to shift buying processes online.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Northia Strategic Holdings, in the dynamic environment of Semiconductors industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Northia Strategic Holdings has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Northia Strategic Holdings has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Semiconductors industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Employees’ less understanding of Northia Strategic Holdings strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Semiconductors industry using digital technology.
Need for greater diversity
– Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
Northia Strategic Holdings Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Northia Strategic Holdings are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Northia Strategic Holdings to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Semiconductors industry.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Northia Strategic Holdings is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Northia Strategic Holdings can utilize new technology in the field of Semiconductors industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Northia Strategic Holdings in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Semiconductors industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Northia Strategic Holdings can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Semiconductors 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Northia Strategic Holdings can develop new processes and procedures in Semiconductors 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Semiconductors industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Northia Strategic Holdings in the Semiconductors industry. Now Northia Strategic Holdings can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Northia Strategic Holdings has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Semiconductors industry. This can help Northia Strategic Holdings to build a more holistic ecosystem for Northia Strategic Holdings products in the Semiconductors industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
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 Northia Strategic Holdings 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.
Threats Northia Strategic Holdings External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Northia Strategic Holdings are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Northia Strategic Holdings has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Semiconductors industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Northia Strategic Holdings needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Semiconductors 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.
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. Northia Strategic Holdings needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Semiconductors industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Northia Strategic Holdings 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. Northia Strategic Holdings can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Semiconductors industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Northia Strategic Holdings is facing in Semiconductors sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Northia Strategic Holdings needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Semiconductors industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Semiconductors industry and other sectors.
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 Northia Strategic Holdings business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Semiconductors industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Northia Strategic Holdings prominent markets.
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 Semiconductors industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Northia Strategic Holdings can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Northia Strategic Holdings
– 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 Northia Strategic Holdings.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Northia Strategic Holdings may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Semiconductors sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Northia Strategic Holdings Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Northia Strategic Holdings 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 Northia Strategic Holdings needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.