SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Zhejiang Expressway (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Zhejiang Expressway 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, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
increasing commodity prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Zhejiang Expressway
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Zhejiang Expressway can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Zhejiang Expressway, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Zhejiang Expressway 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 Zhejiang Expressway can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Zhejiang Expressway
2. Improving business portfolio management of Zhejiang Expressway
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Misc. Transportation sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Zhejiang Expressway
Strengths of Zhejiang Expressway | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Zhejiang Expressway are -
Innovation driven organization
– Zhejiang Expressway is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Transportation sector.
Digital Transformation in Misc. Transportation industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Zhejiang Expressway digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Zhejiang Expressway has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Zhejiang Expressway staying ahead in the Misc. Transportation industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Training and development
– Zhejiang Expressway has one of the best training and development program in Transportation 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Zhejiang Expressway in the Transportation sector have low bargaining power. Zhejiang Expressway has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Zhejiang Expressway to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Zhejiang Expressway is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Transportation industry. This has provided Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Learning organization
- Zhejiang Expressway 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 Zhejiang Expressway is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Zhejiang Expressway emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Zhejiang Expressway has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Zhejiang Expressway in Misc. Transportation industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Zhejiang Expressway has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Misc. Transportation industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Zhejiang Expressway have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Zhejiang Expressway
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Zhejiang Expressway does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses of Zhejiang Expressway | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Zhejiang Expressway are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Zhejiang Expressway has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Transportation industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Zhejiang Expressway should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Zhejiang Expressway is one of the leading players in the Misc. Transportation industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Misc. Transportation industry in last five years.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Misc. Transportation industry, Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Zhejiang Expressway needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Zhejiang Expressway products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Zhejiang Expressway needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Zhejiang Expressway has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Misc. Transportation industry over the last five years. Zhejiang Expressway 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.
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 Zhejiang Expressway supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Zhejiang Expressway is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Zhejiang Expressway vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Employees’ less understanding of Zhejiang Expressway strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Zhejiang Expressway is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Zhejiang Expressway to provide better information regarding Misc. Transportation products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Zhejiang Expressway 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, Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Zhejiang Expressway Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Zhejiang Expressway are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Zhejiang Expressway has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Misc. Transportation sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Zhejiang Expressway to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Zhejiang Expressway to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Zhejiang Expressway in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Misc. Transportation industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Misc. Transportation industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Zhejiang Expressway 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. Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Misc. Transportation industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Zhejiang Expressway can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Zhejiang Expressway 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, Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Zhejiang Expressway is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Zhejiang Expressway can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Transportation industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Zhejiang Expressway 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 Zhejiang Expressway to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Zhejiang Expressway has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Transportation industry. This can help Zhejiang Expressway to build a more holistic ecosystem for Zhejiang Expressway products in the Misc. Transportation industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Zhejiang Expressway can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Zhejiang Expressway 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.
Threats Zhejiang Expressway External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Zhejiang Expressway are -
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. Zhejiang Expressway needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Transportation industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Transportation industry are lowering. It can presents Zhejiang Expressway with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Misc. Transportation sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Zhejiang Expressway 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 Zhejiang Expressway prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Zhejiang Expressway 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 Misc. Transportation industry and other sectors.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Zhejiang Expressway has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Transportation industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Zhejiang Expressway needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Misc. 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Zhejiang Expressway 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.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Transportation industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Zhejiang Expressway can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Zhejiang Expressway may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Transportation sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Zhejiang Expressway 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 Misc. Transportation industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Zhejiang Expressway 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 Misc. Transportation industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Zhejiang Expressway
– 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 Zhejiang Expressway.
Environmental challenges
– Zhejiang Expressway 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. Zhejiang Expressway can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Transportation industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Zhejiang Expressway Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Zhejiang Expressway 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 Zhejiang Expressway 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 Zhejiang Expressway 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 Zhejiang Expressway 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 Zhejiang Expressway needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.