Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd (QCHB) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Construction - Raw Materials
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing transportation and logistics costs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, technology disruption,
wage bills are increasing, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Construction - Raw Materials sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd
Strengths of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd are -
High brand equity
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd 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 Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd in Construction - Raw Materials industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Construction - Raw Materials industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Training and development
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd is one of the leading players in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Construction - Raw Materials industry
– Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd is one of the most innovative firm in Construction - Raw Materials sector.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Construction - Raw Materials industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry using digital technology.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has some of the most successful models in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Construction - Raw Materials 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 Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd is one of the leading players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in last five years.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd is just above the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
High dependence on Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Construction - Raw Materials industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Skills based hiring in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd 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.
Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd are -
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. Now Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd 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 - Raw Materials industry.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Construction - Raw Materials sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Construction - Raw Materials sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd 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 Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Construction - Raw Materials industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Quality Concrete Holdings 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. Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry and other sectors.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd in Construction - Raw Materials industry. The Construction - Raw Materials 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 Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd.
Regulatory challenges
– Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry regulations.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
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. Quality Concrete Holdings 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd is facing in Construction - Raw Materials sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Construction - Raw Materials industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry are lowering. It can presents Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Construction - Raw Materials sector.
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. Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Construction - Raw Materials industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Quality Concrete Holdings 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 Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
