China Everbright Water Ltd (CEWL) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Water Utilities
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for China Everbright Water Ltd (Singapore)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , China Everbright Water Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of China Everbright Water Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that China Everbright Water Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the China Everbright Water Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which China Everbright Water 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 China Everbright Water Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of China Everbright Water Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of China Everbright Water Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Singapore
4. Making a Water Utilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of China Everbright Water Ltd
Strengths of China Everbright Water Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of China Everbright Water Ltd are -
Ability to lead change in Water Utilities
– China Everbright Water Ltd is one of the leading players in the Water Utilities industry in Singapore. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Water Utilities industry in Singapore but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled China Everbright Water Ltd in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Innovation driven organization
– China Everbright Water Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Water Utilities sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– China Everbright Water Ltd is one of the leading players in the Water Utilities industry in Singapore. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Singapore. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High brand equity
– China Everbright Water Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled China Everbright Water Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– China Everbright Water Ltd is present in almost all the verticals within the Water Utilities industry. This has provided China Everbright Water 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Water Utilities industry
– China Everbright Water 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.
Digital Transformation in Water Utilities industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For China Everbright Water Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. China Everbright Water 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of China Everbright Water Ltd comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Water Utilities 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– China Everbright Water Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – China Everbright Water Ltd staying ahead in the Water Utilities industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of China Everbright Water Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing China Everbright Water Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Water Utilities industry
– China Everbright Water Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled China Everbright Water Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Water Utilities industry. The sustainable margins have also helped China Everbright Water Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– China Everbright Water Ltd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Water Utilities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of China Everbright Water Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of China Everbright Water Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of China Everbright Water Ltd are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, China Everbright Water Ltd 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 Water Utilities industry using digital technology.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, China Everbright Water Ltd is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help China Everbright Water Ltd to provide better information regarding Water Utilities products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
China Everbright Water Ltd has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Water Utilities industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of China Everbright Water Ltd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Water Utilities industry, but China Everbright Water Ltd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help China Everbright Water Ltd to focus more on services in the Water Utilities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on China Everbright Water Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of China Everbright Water Ltd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Water Utilities industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though China Everbright Water Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at China Everbright Water Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Water Utilities industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. China Everbright Water Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Water Utilities industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Singapore, China Everbright Water 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 Water Utilities industry.
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 China Everbright Water Ltd supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, China Everbright Water Ltd is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left China Everbright Water Ltd vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of China Everbright Water Ltd, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Water Utilities 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, China Everbright Water Ltd has high operating costs in the Water Utilities industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract China Everbright Water Ltd lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that China Everbright Water Ltd needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Water Utilities industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at China Everbright Water Ltd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as China Everbright Water Ltd is planning to shift buying processes online.
China Everbright Water Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of China Everbright Water Ltd are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, China Everbright Water Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that China Everbright Water Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Water Utilities sector.
Buying journey improvements
– China Everbright Water Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Water Utilities 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.
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. China Everbright Water Ltd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Water Utilities industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. China Everbright Water Ltd can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Manufacturing automation
– China Everbright Water Ltd can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Water Utilities 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for China Everbright Water 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 Water Utilities industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, China Everbright Water Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. China Everbright Water Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Water Utilities industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Water Utilities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. China Everbright Water Ltd 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. China Everbright Water Ltd 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help China Everbright Water Ltd to increase its market reach. China Everbright Water Ltd 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
– China Everbright Water 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– China Everbright Water Ltd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Water Utilities sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled China Everbright Water Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help China Everbright Water Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, China Everbright Water Ltd 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.
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 China Everbright Water 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 China Everbright Water Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of China Everbright Water Ltd are -
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
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 China Everbright Water Ltd in the Water Utilities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for China Everbright Water Ltd in Water Utilities industry. The Water Utilities 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– China Everbright Water 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 Water Utilities industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Water Utilities industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. China Everbright Water Ltd can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. China Everbright Water 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.
Increasing wage structure of China Everbright Water 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 China Everbright Water Ltd.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, China Everbright Water 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 Water Utilities 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 China Everbright Water Ltd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on China Everbright Water Ltd 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 Water Utilities industry and other sectors.
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 China Everbright Water Ltd.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, China Everbright Water Ltd can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate China Everbright Water Ltd prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of China Everbright Water Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at China Everbright Water 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 China Everbright Water 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 China Everbright Water 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 China Everbright Water 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 China Everbright Water Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.