SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Winning Tower (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Winning Tower is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is backlash against globalization, technology disruption, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Winning Tower can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Winning Tower, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Winning Tower 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 Winning Tower can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Winning Tower
2. Improving business portfolio management of Winning Tower
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Winning Tower
Strengths of Winning Tower | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Winning Tower are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Winning Tower 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.
High brand equity
– Winning Tower has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Winning Tower to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Winning Tower has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Winning Tower staying ahead in the Food Processing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Winning Tower in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry
– Winning Tower has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Winning Tower to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Winning Tower to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Winning Tower 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 Winning Tower is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Winning Tower emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Winning Tower has one of the best training and development program in Consumer/Non-Cyclical 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Winning Tower is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Winning Tower 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Winning Tower has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Food Processing industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Winning Tower have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Winning Tower has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Winning Tower 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Winning Tower is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Winning Tower in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Winning Tower has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Winning Tower to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Winning Tower | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Winning Tower are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Winning Tower, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Food Processing 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, Winning Tower needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Winning Tower is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Winning Tower needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Winning Tower to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Winning Tower has some of the most successful models in the Food Processing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Winning Tower should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Winning Tower 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Winning Tower, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Winning Tower 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
Winning Tower has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Food Processing industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Winning Tower is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Food Processing industry.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Winning Tower has high operating costs in the Food Processing industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Winning Tower lucrative customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Winning Tower 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Winning Tower 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.
Winning Tower Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Winning Tower are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Winning Tower 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. Winning Tower 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Winning Tower has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Winning Tower to build a more holistic ecosystem for Winning Tower products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Winning Tower 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Winning Tower 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Winning Tower 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 Winning Tower to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Winning Tower is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Winning Tower can utilize new technology in the field of Food Processing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Winning Tower 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.
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. Winning Tower can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Winning Tower to increase its market reach. Winning Tower will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Winning Tower has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Food Processing sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Winning Tower to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Winning Tower to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Winning Tower can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Food Processing 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Winning Tower can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Winning Tower operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Winning Tower 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.
Threats Winning Tower External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Winning Tower are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Winning Tower in Food Processing industry. The Food Processing 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.
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 Winning Tower in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Winning Tower.
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 Food Processing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Winning Tower can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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. Winning Tower needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Winning Tower business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Winning Tower has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Winning Tower needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Food Processing 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Winning Tower may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Food Processing sector.
Increasing wage structure of Winning Tower
– 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 Winning Tower.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Winning Tower with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing sector.
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. Winning Tower 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Winning Tower Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Winning Tower 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 Winning Tower 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 Winning Tower 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 Winning Tower 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 Winning Tower needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
