Great Eastern Holdings Ltd (GELA) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Insurance (Life)
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Great Eastern Holdings Ltd (Singapore)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing energy prices,
there is backlash against globalization, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Great Eastern Holdings Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Great Eastern Holdings Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Singapore
4. Making a Insurance (Life) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd
Strengths of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd are -
Analytics focus
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Insurance (Life) industry. The technology infrastructure of Singapore 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Insurance (Life) industry
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Insurance (Life) industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Great Eastern Holdings Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Training and development
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has one of the best training and development program in Financial 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.
Learning organization
- Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Great Eastern Holdings Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Great Eastern Holdings Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Insurance (Life) industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Great Eastern Holdings Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is present in almost all the verticals within the Insurance (Life) industry. This has provided Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Great Eastern Holdings Ltd staying ahead in the Insurance (Life) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Insurance (Life) sector.
Weaknesses of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is just above the Insurance (Life) 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Great Eastern Holdings Ltd vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Great Eastern Holdings Ltd needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Insurance (Life) industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Great Eastern Holdings Ltd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on Great Eastern Holdings Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Insurance (Life) industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Insurance (Life) industry over the last five years. Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has high operating costs in the Insurance (Life) industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Great Eastern Holdings Ltd lucrative customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has some of the most successful models in the Insurance (Life) industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Great Eastern Holdings Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Insurance (Life) industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Singapore, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Insurance (Life) industry.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Insurance (Life) industry, but Great Eastern Holdings Ltd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Great Eastern Holdings Ltd to focus more on services in the Insurance (Life) industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Great Eastern Holdings Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Insurance (Life) industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Great Eastern Holdings Ltd can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Great Eastern Holdings Ltd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Insurance (Life) industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Insurance (Life) industry.
Buying journey improvements
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Insurance (Life) 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Great Eastern Holdings Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Insurance (Life) industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Insurance (Life) industry. This can help Great Eastern Holdings Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Great Eastern Holdings Ltd products in the Insurance (Life) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Insurance (Life) 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Great Eastern Holdings Ltd to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Threats Great Eastern Holdings Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd are -
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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd in the Insurance (Life) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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.
Increasing wage structure of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd
– 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd.
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. Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd is facing in Insurance (Life) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Insurance (Life) sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Great Eastern Holdings Ltd in Insurance (Life) industry. The Insurance (Life) 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Insurance (Life) industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Great Eastern Holdings Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Insurance (Life) 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.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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. Great Eastern Holdings Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Insurance (Life) industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Insurance (Life) industry.
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. Great Eastern Holdings Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Insurance (Life) industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Great Eastern Holdings Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd 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 Great Eastern Holdings Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.