Grand Central Enterprises (GRAN) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Grand Central Enterprises (Malaysia)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Grand Central Enterprises is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, technology disruption, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Grand Central Enterprises

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Grand Central Enterprises can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Grand Central Enterprises, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Grand Central Enterprises 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 Grand Central Enterprises can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Grand Central Enterprises
2. Improving business portfolio management of Grand Central Enterprises
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 Grand Central Enterprises

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Strengths of Grand Central Enterprises | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Grand Central Enterprises are -

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Grand Central Enterprises has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Grand Central Enterprises 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.

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

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

Learning organization

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

High brand equity

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

Training and development

– Grand Central Enterprises 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 recruit top talent

– Grand Central Enterprises is one of the leading players in the Hotels & Motels 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.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

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

Analytics focus

– Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Innovation driven organization

– Grand Central Enterprises is one of the most innovative firm in Hotels & Motels sector.

Diverse revenue streams

– Grand Central Enterprises is present in almost all the verticals within the Hotels & Motels industry. This has provided Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Grand Central Enterprises in Hotels & Motels industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

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Weaknesses of Grand Central Enterprises | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Grand Central Enterprises are -

High bargaining power of channel partners in Hotels & Motels industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in Malaysia, Grand Central Enterprises 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 Hotels & Motels industry.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Grand Central Enterprises 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.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Grand Central Enterprises, 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.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Grand Central Enterprises is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Hotels & Motels industry, but Grand Central Enterprises needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Grand Central Enterprises to focus more on services in the Hotels & Motels industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

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 Grand Central Enterprises supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Grand Central Enterprises is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Grand Central Enterprises vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Employees’ less understanding of Grand Central Enterprises strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Need for greater diversity

– Grand Central Enterprises 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.

High dependence on Grand Central Enterprises ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Grand Central Enterprises 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 Grand Central Enterprises has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Hotels & Motels industry, Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Grand Central Enterprises 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. Grand Central Enterprises 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, Grand Central Enterprises 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.

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Grand Central Enterprises Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Grand Central Enterprises are -

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Grand Central Enterprises has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Hotels & Motels industry. This can help Grand Central Enterprises to build a more holistic ecosystem for Grand Central Enterprises products in the Hotels & Motels industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Loyalty marketing

– Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Grand Central Enterprises to increase its market reach. Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Grand Central Enterprises 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 Grand Central Enterprises to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

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

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Grand Central Enterprises is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Grand Central Enterprises 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 Grand Central Enterprises to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Grand Central Enterprises to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Hotels & Motels industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Grand Central Enterprises in the Hotels & Motels industry. Now Grand Central Enterprises can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

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. Grand Central Enterprises 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. Grand Central Enterprises 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Grand Central Enterprises can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Grand Central Enterprises operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Hotels & Motels sector.

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Threats Grand Central Enterprises External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Grand Central Enterprises are -

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

Regulatory challenges

– Grand Central Enterprises 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.

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. Grand Central Enterprises 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.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Grand Central Enterprises 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.

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. Grand Central Enterprises can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Hotels & Motels industry are lowering. It can presents Grand Central Enterprises with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Hotels & Motels sector.

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 Grand Central Enterprises in the Hotels & Motels sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Environmental challenges

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

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 Grand Central Enterprises.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Grand Central Enterprises in Hotels & Motels industry. The Hotels & Motels 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.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Grand Central Enterprises 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 Grand Central Enterprises 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 Grand Central Enterprises Template, Example

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

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