SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Genting Plantations (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Genting Plantations is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, increasing energy prices, increasing commodity prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Genting Plantations
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Genting Plantations can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Genting Plantations, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Genting Plantations 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 Genting Plantations can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Genting Plantations
2. Improving business portfolio management of Genting Plantations
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Crops sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Genting Plantations
Strengths of Genting Plantations | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Genting Plantations are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Genting Plantations has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Genting Plantations 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Genting Plantations 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Genting Plantations is present in almost all the verticals within the Crops industry. This has provided Genting Plantations 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Crops industry
– Genting Plantations is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Genting Plantations has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Genting Plantations staying ahead in the Crops industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Genting Plantations in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Genting Plantations has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Genting Plantations to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Crops industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Genting Plantations digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Genting Plantations 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Genting Plantations is one of the leading players in the Crops industry in Malaysia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Malaysia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Genting Plantations in Crops industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High brand equity
– Genting Plantations has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Genting Plantations to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Crops industry
– Genting Plantations has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Genting Plantations to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Crops industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Genting Plantations to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Genting Plantations has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Crops industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Genting Plantations have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Genting Plantations | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Genting Plantations are -
Employees’ less understanding of Genting Plantations strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Genting Plantations 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Crops industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Malaysia, Genting Plantations 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 Crops industry.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Genting Plantations is just above the Crops 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.
Skills based hiring in Crops industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Genting Plantations 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Genting Plantations has some of the most successful models in the Crops industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Genting Plantations should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Genting Plantations needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Crops industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Genting Plantations can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Genting Plantations is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Genting Plantations is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Genting Plantations to provide better information regarding Crops products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Genting Plantations 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, Genting Plantations 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Genting Plantations has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Crops industry over the last five years. Genting Plantations 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Genting Plantations, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Crops industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Genting Plantations Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Genting Plantations are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Genting Plantations to increase its market reach. Genting Plantations will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Genting Plantations in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Crops industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Genting Plantations 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 Genting Plantations to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Genting Plantations can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Genting Plantations 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 Crops industry.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Crops industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Genting Plantations in the Crops industry. Now Genting Plantations can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Buying journey improvements
– Genting Plantations can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Crops 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 Genting Plantations 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Genting Plantations can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Genting Plantations can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Genting Plantations operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Crops sector.
Loyalty marketing
– Genting Plantations 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Genting Plantations 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, Genting Plantations is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Genting Plantations can utilize new technology in the field of Crops industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats Genting Plantations External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Genting Plantations are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Genting Plantations 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 Crops industry.
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 Genting Plantations in Crops industry. The Crops 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.
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 Genting Plantations business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Genting Plantations has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Crops industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Genting Plantations needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Crops 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.
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 Genting Plantations in the Crops sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Genting Plantations 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. Genting Plantations can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Crops industry.
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. Genting Plantations 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.
Increasing wage structure of Genting Plantations
– 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 Genting Plantations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Genting Plantations 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 Genting Plantations prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Genting Plantations is facing in Crops sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Genting Plantations 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Genting Plantations Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Genting Plantations 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 Genting Plantations 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 Genting Plantations 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 Genting Plantations 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 Genting Plantations needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.