Ten Lifestyle (TENG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Personal Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Ten Lifestyle (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Ten Lifestyle is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Ten Lifestyle can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ten Lifestyle, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ten Lifestyle 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 Ten Lifestyle can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Ten Lifestyle
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ten Lifestyle
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Personal Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ten Lifestyle
Strengths of Ten Lifestyle | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Ten Lifestyle are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Ten Lifestyle 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 Personal Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Ten Lifestyle digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Ten Lifestyle 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Personal Services industry
– Ten Lifestyle has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Ten Lifestyle to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Personal Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Ten Lifestyle to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Ten Lifestyle is present in almost all the verticals within the Personal Services industry. This has provided Ten Lifestyle 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Ten Lifestyle comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Personal 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Ten Lifestyle is one of the most innovative firm in Personal Services sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Ten Lifestyle has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Ten Lifestyle staying ahead in the Personal Services 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 Ten Lifestyle 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Ten Lifestyle has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Personal Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Ten Lifestyle have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management in the Personal Services industry
– Ten Lifestyle is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Ten Lifestyle has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Ten Lifestyle 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 Ten Lifestyle in Personal Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Ten Lifestyle | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Ten Lifestyle are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Ten Lifestyle has some of the most successful models in the Personal Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Ten Lifestyle should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Ten Lifestyle is just above the Personal Services industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Personal Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Ten Lifestyle 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 Personal Services industry.
Lack of clear differentiation of Ten Lifestyle products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Ten Lifestyle needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in Personal Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Ten Lifestyle 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Ten Lifestyle 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Personal Services industry, Ten Lifestyle 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Ten Lifestyle 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 Personal Services industry using digital technology.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Ten Lifestyle needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Personal Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Ten Lifestyle can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Ten Lifestyle is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Ten Lifestyle needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Ten Lifestyle has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Personal 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.
Ten Lifestyle Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Ten Lifestyle are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Ten Lifestyle 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Ten Lifestyle has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Personal Services industry. This can help Ten Lifestyle to build a more holistic ecosystem for Ten Lifestyle products in the Personal Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Ten Lifestyle is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Ten Lifestyle can utilize new technology in the field of Personal Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Ten Lifestyle in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Personal Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Ten Lifestyle to increase its market reach. Ten Lifestyle will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Ten Lifestyle has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Ten Lifestyle to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Ten Lifestyle to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Ten Lifestyle can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Personal Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Ten Lifestyle 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. Ten Lifestyle 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Ten Lifestyle can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Personal 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Ten Lifestyle can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Personal 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Personal Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Ten Lifestyle can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Ten Lifestyle can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Ten Lifestyle 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 Personal Services industry.
Threats Ten Lifestyle External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Ten Lifestyle are -
Regulatory challenges
– Ten Lifestyle 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 Personal Services industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Ten Lifestyle 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 Personal Services industry and other sectors.
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 Ten Lifestyle in the Personal Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Ten Lifestyle 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. Ten Lifestyle can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Personal Services industry.
Increasing wage structure of Ten Lifestyle
– 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 Ten Lifestyle.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Ten Lifestyle 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 Ten Lifestyle prominent markets.
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. Ten Lifestyle needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Personal Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Ten Lifestyle in Personal Services industry. The Personal 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Ten Lifestyle 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.
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 Ten Lifestyle.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Ten Lifestyle has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ten Lifestyle needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Ten Lifestyle 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 Personal Services industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ten Lifestyle Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Ten Lifestyle 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 Ten Lifestyle 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 Ten Lifestyle 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 Ten Lifestyle 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 Ten Lifestyle needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.