Great Eastern Shipping (GESC) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Water Transportation
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Great Eastern Shipping (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Great Eastern Shipping is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing commodity prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, wage bills are increasing, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs,
increasing energy prices, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Great Eastern Shipping
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Great Eastern Shipping can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Great Eastern Shipping, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Great Eastern Shipping 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 Great Eastern Shipping can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Great Eastern Shipping
2. Improving business portfolio management of Great Eastern Shipping
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Water Transportation sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Great Eastern Shipping
Strengths of Great Eastern Shipping | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Great Eastern Shipping are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Great Eastern Shipping in Water Transportation industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High brand equity
– Great Eastern Shipping has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Great Eastern Shipping to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Water Transportation industry
– Great Eastern Shipping has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Great Eastern Shipping to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Water Transportation industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Great Eastern Shipping to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Great Eastern Shipping is present in almost all the verticals within the Water Transportation industry. This has provided Great Eastern Shipping 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
– Great Eastern Shipping is one of the leading players in the Water Transportation industry in India. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in India. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Great Eastern Shipping 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.
Digital Transformation in Water Transportation industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Great Eastern Shipping digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Great Eastern Shipping 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 switching costs
– The high switching costs that Great Eastern Shipping 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Great Eastern Shipping in the Transportation sector have low bargaining power. Great Eastern Shipping has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Great Eastern Shipping to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Great Eastern Shipping comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Water Transportation 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
– Great Eastern Shipping has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Water Transportation industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Great Eastern Shipping have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Great Eastern Shipping 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 Great Eastern Shipping is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Great Eastern Shipping emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Great Eastern Shipping | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Great Eastern Shipping are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Great Eastern Shipping is one of the leading players in the Water Transportation industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Water Transportation industry in last five years.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Great Eastern Shipping has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Water Transportation industry over the last five years. Great Eastern Shipping even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Great Eastern Shipping 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 Water Transportation industry using digital technology.
Lack of clear differentiation of Great Eastern Shipping products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Great Eastern Shipping needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in Water Transportation industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Great Eastern Shipping 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Great Eastern Shipping has high operating costs in the Water Transportation industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Great Eastern Shipping lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Great Eastern Shipping, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Water Transportation 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.
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 Great Eastern Shipping supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Great Eastern Shipping is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Great Eastern Shipping vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Great Eastern Shipping is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Great Eastern Shipping to provide better information regarding Water Transportation products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Great Eastern Shipping, in the dynamic environment of Water Transportation industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Great Eastern Shipping has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High dependence on Great Eastern Shipping ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Great Eastern Shipping still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Water Transportation industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Great Eastern Shipping has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Great Eastern Shipping Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Great Eastern Shipping are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Great Eastern Shipping to increase its market reach. Great Eastern Shipping 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Great Eastern Shipping in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Water Transportation industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Great Eastern Shipping 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 Great Eastern Shipping to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Water Transportation industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Great Eastern Shipping 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. Great Eastern Shipping 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Great Eastern Shipping can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Great Eastern Shipping operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Water Transportation sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Great Eastern Shipping 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Great Eastern Shipping 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Great Eastern Shipping can develop new processes and procedures in Water Transportation 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.
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 Great Eastern Shipping 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Great Eastern Shipping can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Great Eastern Shipping to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Water Transportation industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Great Eastern Shipping in the Water Transportation industry. Now Great Eastern Shipping can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Great Eastern Shipping 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Water Transportation industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Great Eastern Shipping can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Great Eastern Shipping External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Great Eastern Shipping are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Great Eastern Shipping is facing in Water Transportation sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Water Transportation industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Great Eastern Shipping can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Great Eastern Shipping 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 Water Transportation industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of Great Eastern Shipping
– 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 Great Eastern Shipping.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Great Eastern Shipping 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 Water Transportation industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Great Eastern Shipping 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 Water Transportation industry.
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 Great Eastern Shipping.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Great Eastern Shipping may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Water Transportation sector.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Water Transportation industry are lowering. It can presents Great Eastern Shipping with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Water Transportation sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Great Eastern Shipping 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.
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. Great Eastern Shipping 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Great Eastern Shipping has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Water Transportation industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Great Eastern Shipping needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Water Transportation 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Great Eastern Shipping Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Great Eastern Shipping 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 Great Eastern Shipping 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 Great Eastern Shipping 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 Great Eastern Shipping 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 Great Eastern Shipping needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.