Great Portland Estates PLC (32NJ) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Great Portland Estates PLC (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Great Portland Estates PLC is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is backlash against globalization, wage bills are increasing,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Great Portland Estates PLC
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Great Portland Estates PLC can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Great Portland Estates PLC, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Great Portland Estates PLC 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 Portland Estates PLC can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Great Portland Estates PLC
2. Improving business portfolio management of Great Portland Estates PLC
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Great Portland Estates PLC
Strengths of Great Portland Estates PLC | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Great Portland Estates PLC are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Great Portland Estates PLC is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Great Portland Estates PLC 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Great Portland Estates PLC has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Great Portland Estates PLC staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Great Portland Estates PLC 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Great Portland Estates PLC is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Analytics focus
– Great Portland Estates PLC 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 industry. The technology infrastructure of United Kingdom 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Great Portland Estates PLC has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Great Portland Estates PLC to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Great Portland Estates PLC to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Great Portland Estates PLC comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Training and development
– Great Portland Estates PLC has one of the best training and development program in 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Great Portland Estates PLC is one of the leading players in the industry in United Kingdom. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United Kingdom. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High brand equity
– Great Portland Estates PLC has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Great Portland Estates PLC to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Great Portland Estates PLC has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Great Portland Estates PLC have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Great Portland Estates PLC 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.
Weaknesses of Great Portland Estates PLC | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Great Portland Estates PLC are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Great Portland Estates PLC is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Great Portland Estates PLC to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Great Portland Estates PLC is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Great Portland Estates PLC needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Great Portland Estates PLC to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Great Portland Estates PLC, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Great Portland Estates PLC has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Great Portland Estates PLC has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Great Portland Estates PLC lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Great Portland Estates PLC is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Great Portland Estates PLC 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 Great Portland Estates PLC needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Great Portland Estates PLC can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Great Portland Estates PLC is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Great Portland Estates PLC has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Great Portland Estates PLC has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Great Portland Estates PLC 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Great Portland Estates PLC 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.
Great Portland Estates PLC Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Great Portland Estates PLC are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Great Portland Estates PLC 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Great Portland Estates PLC is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Great Portland Estates PLC can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Great Portland Estates PLC can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Great Portland Estates PLC 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 Portland Estates PLC 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.
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 Portland Estates PLC 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Great Portland Estates PLC 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 industry.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Great Portland Estates PLC 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, Great Portland Estates PLC can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Great Portland Estates PLC operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Manufacturing automation
– Great Portland Estates PLC can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Great Portland Estates PLC 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 Great Portland Estates PLC 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 Portland Estates PLC to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Great Portland Estates PLC has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Great Portland Estates PLC to build a more holistic ecosystem for Great Portland Estates PLC products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Great Portland Estates PLC has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Great Portland Estates PLC to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Great Portland Estates PLC to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Great Portland Estates PLC External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Great Portland Estates PLC are -
Environmental challenges
– Great Portland Estates PLC 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. Great Portland Estates PLC can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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 Great Portland Estates PLC business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Great Portland Estates PLC 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.
Increasing wage structure of Great Portland Estates PLC
– 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 Portland Estates PLC.
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.
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 Portland Estates PLC 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 Portland Estates PLC has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Great Portland Estates PLC needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Great Portland Estates PLC 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 industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Great Portland Estates PLC is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Great Portland Estates PLC may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
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. Great Portland Estates PLC needs to understand the core reasons impacting the 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 Great Portland Estates PLC in industry. The 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Great Portland Estates PLC with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Great Portland Estates PLC Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Great Portland Estates PLC 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 Portland Estates PLC 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 Portland Estates PLC 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 Portland Estates PLC 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 Portland Estates PLC needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.