SCGM Bhd (SCGB) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Containers & Packaging
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for SCGM Bhd (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , SCGM Bhd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing energy prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing commodity prices, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that SCGM Bhd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the SCGM Bhd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which SCGM Bhd 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 SCGM Bhd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of SCGM Bhd
2. Improving business portfolio management of SCGM Bhd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Containers & Packaging sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of SCGM Bhd
Strengths of SCGM Bhd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of SCGM Bhd are -
Organizational Resilience of SCGM Bhd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing SCGM Bhd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– SCGM Bhd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled SCGM Bhd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Innovation driven organization
– SCGM Bhd is one of the most innovative firm in Containers & Packaging sector.
Learning organization
- SCGM Bhd 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 SCGM Bhd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at SCGM Bhd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of SCGM Bhd comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Containers & Packaging 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Containers & Packaging industry
– SCGM Bhd is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to lead change in Containers & Packaging
– SCGM Bhd is one of the leading players in the Containers & Packaging industry in Malaysia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Containers & Packaging industry in Malaysia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled SCGM Bhd in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Containers & Packaging industry
– SCGM Bhd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled SCGM Bhd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Containers & Packaging industry. The sustainable margins have also helped SCGM Bhd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of SCGM Bhd in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. SCGM Bhd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps SCGM Bhd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– SCGM Bhd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. SCGM Bhd 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– SCGM Bhd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Containers & Packaging industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of SCGM Bhd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Containers & Packaging industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For SCGM Bhd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. SCGM Bhd 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 SCGM Bhd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of SCGM Bhd are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that SCGM Bhd needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Containers & Packaging industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at SCGM Bhd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as SCGM Bhd is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, SCGM Bhd has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Containers & Packaging industry over the last five years. SCGM Bhd 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.
Need for greater diversity
– SCGM Bhd 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of SCGM Bhd, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Containers & Packaging 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of SCGM Bhd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, SCGM Bhd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, SCGM Bhd is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help SCGM Bhd to provide better information regarding Containers & Packaging products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, SCGM Bhd has high operating costs in the Containers & Packaging industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract SCGM Bhd lucrative customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, SCGM Bhd 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 Containers & Packaging industry using digital technology.
Employees’ less understanding of SCGM Bhd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of SCGM Bhd 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at SCGM Bhd, in the dynamic environment of Containers & Packaging industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. SCGM Bhd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of SCGM Bhd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Containers & Packaging industry, but SCGM Bhd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help SCGM Bhd to focus more on services in the Containers & Packaging industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
SCGM Bhd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of SCGM Bhd are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– SCGM Bhd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Containers & Packaging sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled SCGM Bhd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help SCGM Bhd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. SCGM Bhd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Leveraging digital technologies
– SCGM Bhd 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help SCGM Bhd to increase its market reach. SCGM Bhd 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.
Loyalty marketing
– SCGM Bhd 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for SCGM Bhd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Containers & Packaging industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects SCGM Bhd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Developing new processes and practices
– SCGM Bhd can develop new processes and procedures in Containers & Packaging 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Containers & Packaging industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. SCGM Bhd 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. SCGM Bhd 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for SCGM Bhd 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 SCGM Bhd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– SCGM Bhd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Containers & Packaging 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 SCGM Bhd 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Containers & Packaging industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. SCGM Bhd can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats SCGM Bhd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of SCGM Bhd are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that SCGM Bhd is facing in Containers & Packaging sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– SCGM Bhd 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 Containers & Packaging industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for SCGM Bhd in Containers & Packaging industry. The Containers & Packaging 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.
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. SCGM Bhd 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 SCGM Bhd.
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. SCGM Bhd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Containers & Packaging industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of SCGM Bhd
– 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 SCGM Bhd.
Consumer confidence and its impact on SCGM Bhd 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 Containers & Packaging 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 SCGM Bhd in the Containers & Packaging sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Containers & Packaging industry are lowering. It can presents SCGM Bhd with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Containers & Packaging sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– SCGM Bhd 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, SCGM Bhd may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Containers & Packaging sector.
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 SCGM Bhd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of SCGM Bhd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at SCGM Bhd 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 SCGM Bhd 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 SCGM Bhd 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 SCGM Bhd 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 SCGM Bhd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
