SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Sinwa Ltd (Singapore)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Sinwa Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, wage bills are increasing, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Sinwa Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sinwa Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sinwa 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 Sinwa Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Sinwa Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sinwa Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Singapore
4. Making a Railroads sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Sinwa Ltd
Strengths of Sinwa Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sinwa Ltd are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Sinwa Ltd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Railroads industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Sinwa Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Sinwa Ltd is one of the leading players in the Railroads 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Sinwa Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Sinwa Ltd staying ahead in the Railroads industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Sinwa Ltd has one of the best training and development program in Transportation 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.
Digital Transformation in Railroads industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Sinwa Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Sinwa 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.
Organizational Resilience of Sinwa Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Sinwa Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Innovation driven organization
– Sinwa Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Railroads sector.
Learning organization
- Sinwa 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 Sinwa Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Sinwa Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Sinwa 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Sinwa Ltd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Sinwa Ltd 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.
High brand equity
– Sinwa Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Sinwa Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Railroads
– Sinwa Ltd is one of the leading players in the Railroads industry in Singapore. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Railroads industry in Singapore but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Sinwa Ltd in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Sinwa Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Sinwa Ltd are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Sinwa Ltd is one of the leading players in the Railroads industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Railroads industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring in Railroads industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Sinwa Ltd 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Sinwa Ltd, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Railroads 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Sinwa Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Sinwa Ltd 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Sinwa Ltd has high operating costs in the Railroads industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Sinwa Ltd lucrative customers.
High dependence on Sinwa Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Sinwa Ltd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Railroads industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Sinwa Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Sinwa Ltd is just above the Railroads 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Sinwa 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 Railroads industry over the last five years. Sinwa 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Railroads industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Singapore, Sinwa 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 Railroads industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Sinwa 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 Railroads 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, Sinwa Ltd is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Sinwa Ltd to provide better information regarding Railroads products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Sinwa Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Sinwa Ltd are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Sinwa 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 Railroads industry.
Buying journey improvements
– Sinwa Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Railroads industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Sinwa 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Railroads industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Sinwa 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. Sinwa 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Sinwa 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 Sinwa 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Sinwa Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Railroads industry. This can help Sinwa Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Sinwa Ltd products in the Railroads industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Sinwa Ltd to increase its market reach. Sinwa 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Railroads industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Sinwa Ltd can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Sinwa 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.
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 Sinwa 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Sinwa Ltd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Sinwa 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Sinwa 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 Railroads industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Sinwa Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Sinwa Ltd are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Sinwa Ltd is facing in Railroads sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Sinwa Ltd.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Sinwa 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 Railroads industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Sinwa Ltd 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 Railroads industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Sinwa 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 Railroads sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Sinwa 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 Sinwa Ltd prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Sinwa Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Railroads industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Sinwa Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Railroads 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Railroads industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Sinwa Ltd can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Sinwa Ltd in the Railroads sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Sinwa 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. Sinwa Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Railroads industry.
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.
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. Sinwa 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sinwa Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Sinwa 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 Sinwa 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 Sinwa 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 Sinwa 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 Sinwa Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
