Cowell Development (COWL) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Cowell Development (Indonesia)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Cowell Development is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Cowell Development

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Cowell Development can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cowell Development, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cowell Development 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Cowell Development can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Cowell Development
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cowell Development
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Indonesia
4. Making a Construction Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Cowell Development

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Strengths of Cowell Development | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Cowell Development are -

Successful track record of launching new products

– Cowell Development has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Cowell Development 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 Cowell Development

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Cowell Development does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Cowell Development comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Construction 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.

Diverse revenue streams

– Cowell Development is present in almost all the verticals within the Construction Services industry. This has provided Cowell Development 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.

Training and development

– Cowell Development has one of the best training and development program in Capital Goods 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.

Learning organization

- Cowell Development 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 Cowell Development is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Cowell Development emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Digital Transformation in Construction Services industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Cowell Development digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Cowell Development 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.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Cowell Development 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

– Cowell Development is one of the most innovative firm in Construction Services sector.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Cowell Development in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Cowell Development has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Cowell Development to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Cowell Development has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Construction Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Cowell Development have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Analytics focus

– Cowell Development 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 Construction Services industry. The technology infrastructure of Indonesia 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.

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Weaknesses of Cowell Development | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Cowell Development are -

High bargaining power of channel partners in Construction Services industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in Indonesia, Cowell Development 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 Construction Services industry.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Cowell Development has some of the most successful models in the Construction Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Cowell Development should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of Indonesia, Cowell Development needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Cowell Development is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Cowell Development to provide better information regarding Construction Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

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 Cowell Development supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Cowell Development is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Cowell Development vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Cowell Development 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 Construction Services industry using digital technology.

Skills based hiring in Construction Services industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Cowell Development 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.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Cowell Development needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Construction Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Cowell Development can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Cowell Development is planning to shift buying processes online.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Cowell Development has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Construction 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.

Lack of clear differentiation of Cowell Development products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Cowell Development needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Construction Services industry, Cowell Development 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.

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Cowell Development Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Cowell Development are -

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Construction Services industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Cowell Development in the Construction Services industry. Now Cowell Development can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Loyalty marketing

– Cowell Development 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Cowell Development can develop new processes and procedures in Construction 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Cowell Development can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Construction 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.

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 Cowell Development 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.

Manufacturing automation

– Cowell Development can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Construction 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Cowell Development can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Cowell Development has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Construction Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Cowell Development to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Cowell Development to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Cowell Development 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 Construction Services industry.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Construction Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cowell Development 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. Cowell Development 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.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Cowell Development 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Cowell Development can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Cowell Development operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Construction Services sector.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Cowell Development 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.

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Threats Cowell Development External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Cowell Development are -

Regulatory challenges

– Cowell Development 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 Construction Services industry regulations.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Cowell Development has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Construction Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Cowell Development needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Construction 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.

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. Cowell Development needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Construction Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Cowell Development in Construction Services industry. The Construction 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.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Construction Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Cowell Development can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

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 Cowell Development.

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. Cowell Development 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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Cowell Development 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 Construction Services industry.

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 Cowell Development in the Construction Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Cowell Development is facing in Construction Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Environmental challenges

– Cowell Development 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. Cowell Development can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Construction Services industry.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Cowell Development may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Construction Services sector.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cowell Development Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Cowell Development 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 Cowell Development 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 Cowell Development 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 Cowell Development 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 Cowell Development needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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