Landmarks (LMHS) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Landmarks (Malaysia)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Landmarks is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, technology disruption, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing energy prices, there is backlash against globalization, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Landmarks

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Landmarks can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Landmarks, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Landmarks 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Landmarks can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Landmarks
2. Improving business portfolio management of Landmarks
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Hotels & Motels sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Landmarks

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Strengths of Landmarks | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Landmarks are -

Successful track record of launching new products

– Landmarks has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Landmarks 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.

Analytics focus

– Landmarks 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 Hotels & Motels industry. The technology infrastructure of Malaysia 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Landmarks has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Landmarks staying ahead in the Hotels & Motels industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Hotels & Motels industry

– Landmarks has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Landmarks to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Hotels & Motels industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Landmarks to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Landmarks in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Landmarks has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Landmarks to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Landmarks has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Hotels & Motels industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Landmarks have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Learning organization

- Landmarks 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 Landmarks is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Landmarks emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

High brand equity

– Landmarks has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Landmarks to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Training and development

– Landmarks has one of the best training and development program in Services 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 lead change in Hotels & Motels

– Landmarks is one of the leading players in the Hotels & Motels industry in Malaysia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Hotels & Motels industry in Malaysia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Landmarks in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Strong track record of project management in the Hotels & Motels industry

– Landmarks is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Landmarks 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.

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Weaknesses of Landmarks | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Landmarks are -

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Landmarks 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 Hotels & Motels industry using digital technology.

High dependence on Landmarks ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Landmarks still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Hotels & Motels industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Landmarks has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Landmarks is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Landmarks to provide better information regarding Hotels & Motels products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of Malaysia, Landmarks needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

Skills based hiring in Hotels & Motels industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Landmarks 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.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Landmarks has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Hotels & Motels industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

Need for greater diversity

– Landmarks 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.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Landmarks has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Hotels & Motels industry over the last five years. Landmarks 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.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Landmarks 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.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Landmarks, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Hotels & Motels 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.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Landmarks is just above the Hotels & Motels 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.

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Landmarks Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Landmarks are -

Buying journey improvements

– Landmarks can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Hotels & Motels 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Landmarks 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 Landmarks has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Hotels & Motels industry. This can help Landmarks to build a more holistic ecosystem for Landmarks products in the Hotels & Motels industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Landmarks in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Hotels & Motels industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Manufacturing automation

– Landmarks can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Hotels & Motels 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.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Landmarks is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Landmarks can utilize new technology in the field of Hotels & Motels industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Landmarks 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 Landmarks to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Loyalty marketing

– Landmarks 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Landmarks has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Hotels & Motels sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Landmarks to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Landmarks to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Landmarks 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 Hotels & Motels industry.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Landmarks 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Landmarks 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 Hotels & Motels industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Landmarks 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. Landmarks 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.

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Threats Landmarks External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Landmarks are -

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Landmarks may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Hotels & Motels sector.

Environmental challenges

– Landmarks 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. Landmarks can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Hotels & Motels industry.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Landmarks has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Hotels & Motels industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Landmarks needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Hotels & Motels 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.

Increasing wage structure of Landmarks

– 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 Landmarks.

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 Landmarks in the Hotels & Motels sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Hotels & Motels industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Landmarks can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

Regulatory challenges

– Landmarks 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 Hotels & Motels industry regulations.

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. Landmarks needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Hotels & Motels industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Landmarks 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.

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.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Landmarks 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 Landmarks prominent markets.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Landmarks is facing in Hotels & Motels sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Landmarks 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 Hotels & Motels industry and other sectors.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Landmarks Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Landmarks 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 Landmarks 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 Landmarks 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 Landmarks 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 Landmarks needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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