SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for TRC Synergy (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , TRC Synergy is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that TRC Synergy can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the TRC Synergy, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of TRC Synergy
2. Improving business portfolio management of TRC Synergy
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Construction Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of TRC Synergy
Strengths of TRC Synergy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of TRC Synergy are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that TRC Synergy 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.
Training and development
– TRC Synergy has one of the best training and development program in Capital Goods 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.
High brand equity
– TRC Synergy has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled TRC Synergy to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– TRC Synergy has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – TRC Synergy staying ahead in the Construction Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management in the Construction Services industry
– TRC Synergy is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of TRC Synergy in Construction Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– TRC Synergy is present in almost all the verticals within the Construction Services industry. This has provided TRC Synergy 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of TRC Synergy in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. TRC Synergy has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps TRC Synergy to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to recruit top talent
– TRC Synergy is one of the leading players in the Construction Services 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.
Learning organization
- TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at TRC Synergy emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– TRC Synergy has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Construction Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of TRC Synergy have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Construction Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For TRC Synergy digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. TRC Synergy 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.
Weaknesses of TRC Synergy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of TRC Synergy are -
Lack of clear differentiation of TRC Synergy products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, TRC Synergy needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Construction Services industry, TRC Synergy 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.
Employees’ less understanding of TRC Synergy strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of TRC Synergy 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.
Skills based hiring in Construction Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Construction Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at TRC Synergy can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as TRC Synergy is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though TRC Synergy has some of the most successful models in the Construction Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. TRC Synergy should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of TRC Synergy supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, TRC Synergy is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left TRC Synergy vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, TRC Synergy has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Construction Services industry over the last five years. TRC Synergy 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As TRC Synergy is one of the leading players in the Construction Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Construction Services industry in last five years.
High dependence on TRC Synergy ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of TRC Synergy still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Construction Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though TRC Synergy has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, TRC Synergy has high operating costs in the Construction Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract TRC Synergy lucrative customers.
TRC Synergy Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of TRC Synergy are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– TRC Synergy has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Construction Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled TRC Synergy to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help TRC Synergy to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects TRC Synergy 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 Construction Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. TRC Synergy 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. TRC Synergy 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.
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. TRC Synergy can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– TRC Synergy 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, TRC Synergy 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– TRC Synergy 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.
Buying journey improvements
– TRC Synergy can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Construction 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help TRC Synergy to increase its market reach. TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Construction Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at TRC Synergy 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 Construction Services industry.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for TRC Synergy 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.
Threats TRC Synergy External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of TRC Synergy are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Construction Services industry are lowering. It can presents TRC Synergy with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Construction Services sector.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– TRC Synergy 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– TRC Synergy 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 Construction Services industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on TRC Synergy 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 Construction Services industry and other sectors.
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, TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy prominent markets.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for TRC Synergy in Construction Services industry. The Construction 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.
Increasing wage structure of TRC Synergy
– 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 TRC Synergy.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– TRC Synergy has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Construction Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, TRC Synergy needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Construction 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that TRC Synergy is facing in Construction Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 TRC Synergy.
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 TRC Synergy business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of TRC Synergy Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy 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 TRC Synergy needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.