Felda Global Ventures (FGVH) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Crops
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Felda Global Ventures (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Felda Global Ventures is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, geopolitical disruptions, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is backlash against globalization, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Felda Global Ventures
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Felda Global Ventures can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Felda Global Ventures, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Felda Global Ventures
2. Improving business portfolio management of Felda Global Ventures
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 Felda Global Ventures
Strengths of Felda Global Ventures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Felda Global Ventures are -
Learning organization
- Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Felda Global Ventures emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Felda Global Ventures in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Felda Global Ventures has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Felda Global Ventures to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Felda Global Ventures 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Felda Global Ventures in Crops industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Felda Global Ventures
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Felda Global Ventures does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Crops
– Felda Global Ventures is one of the leading players in the Crops industry in Malaysia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Crops industry in Malaysia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Felda Global Ventures in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Felda Global Ventures is present in almost all the verticals within the Crops industry. This has provided Felda Global Ventures 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.
High brand equity
– Felda Global Ventures has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Felda Global Ventures to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Felda Global Ventures 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Felda Global Ventures 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Felda Global Ventures is one of the most innovative firm in Crops sector.
Weaknesses of Felda Global Ventures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Felda Global Ventures are -
High bargaining power of channel partners in Crops industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Malaysia, Felda Global Ventures 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Felda Global Ventures 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Malaysia, Felda Global Ventures needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Felda Global Ventures is one of the leading players in the Crops industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Crops industry in last five years.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Felda Global Ventures 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. Felda Global Ventures should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Felda Global Ventures, 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Felda Global Ventures 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 Crops industry using digital technology.
High dependence on Felda Global Ventures ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Felda Global Ventures still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Crops industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Felda Global Ventures has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Skills based hiring in Crops industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Felda Global Ventures is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Crops industry, Felda Global Ventures 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.
Felda Global Ventures Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Felda Global Ventures are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Crops industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Felda Global Ventures can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Felda Global Ventures has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Crops sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Felda Global Ventures to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Felda Global Ventures to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Felda Global Ventures 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.
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. Felda Global Ventures can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Felda Global Ventures in the Crops industry. Now Felda Global Ventures can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Felda Global Ventures 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Felda Global Ventures 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Felda Global Ventures to increase its market reach. Felda Global Ventures 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Felda Global Ventures can develop new processes and procedures in Crops 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
– Felda Global Ventures 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Felda Global Ventures can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Felda Global Ventures 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.
Threats Felda Global Ventures External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Felda Global Ventures are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Felda Global Ventures may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Crops sector.
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. Felda Global Ventures 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.
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 Felda Global Ventures.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Felda Global Ventures 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.
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 Felda Global Ventures in the Crops sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Felda Global Ventures 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 Crops industry regulations.
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.
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 Felda Global Ventures business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Felda Global Ventures
– 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 Felda Global Ventures.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Felda Global Ventures 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 Crops industry and other sectors.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Felda Global Ventures 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 acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Felda Global Ventures has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Crops industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Felda Global Ventures 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Felda Global Ventures is facing in Crops sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Felda Global Ventures Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures 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 Felda Global Ventures needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
