Raffles United Holdings (RAFF) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Capital Goods
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Raffles United Holdings (Singapore)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Raffles United Holdings is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Raffles United Holdings
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Raffles United Holdings can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Raffles United Holdings, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Raffles United Holdings 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 Raffles United Holdings can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Raffles United Holdings
2. Improving business portfolio management of Raffles United Holdings
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Singapore
4. Making a Misc. Capital Goods sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Raffles United Holdings
Strengths of Raffles United Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Raffles United Holdings are -
Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Capital Goods industry
– Raffles United Holdings is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Raffles United Holdings in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Raffles United Holdings has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Raffles United Holdings to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Raffles United Holdings has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Raffles United Holdings staying ahead in the Misc. Capital Goods industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Capital Goods industry
– Raffles United Holdings has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Raffles United Holdings to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Raffles United Holdings to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Misc. Capital Goods
– Raffles United Holdings is one of the leading players in the Misc. Capital Goods industry in Singapore. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Misc. Capital Goods industry in Singapore but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Raffles United Holdings in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Raffles United Holdings has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Raffles United Holdings 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.
Training and development
– Raffles United Holdings 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
– Raffles United Holdings is one of the leading players in the Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Raffles United Holdings 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Raffles United Holdings has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Misc. Capital Goods industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Raffles United Holdings have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Raffles United Holdings 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 Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Raffles United Holdings comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Weaknesses of Raffles United Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Raffles United Holdings are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, Raffles United Holdings 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Raffles United Holdings, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Raffles United Holdings is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Raffles United Holdings to provide better information regarding Misc. Capital Goods products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Raffles United Holdings is one of the leading players in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Misc. Capital Goods industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Raffles United Holdings, in the dynamic environment of Misc. Capital Goods industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Raffles United Holdings has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High dependence on Raffles United Holdings ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Raffles United Holdings still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Misc. Capital Goods industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Raffles United Holdings has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Raffles United Holdings is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, but Raffles United Holdings needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Raffles United Holdings to focus more on services in the Misc. Capital Goods industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Raffles United Holdings has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Raffles United Holdings should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Raffles United Holdings 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry using digital technology.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Raffles United Holdings is just above the Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Raffles United Holdings needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Misc. Capital Goods industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Raffles United Holdings can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Raffles United Holdings is planning to shift buying processes online.
Raffles United Holdings Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Raffles United Holdings are -
Buying journey improvements
– Raffles United Holdings can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Raffles United Holdings 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 Raffles United Holdings to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Raffles United Holdings can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Misc. Capital Goods industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Raffles United Holdings can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Raffles United Holdings has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Misc. Capital Goods sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Raffles United Holdings to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Raffles United Holdings to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Raffles United Holdings 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Raffles United Holdings 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 Raffles United Holdings to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Raffles United Holdings is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Raffles United Holdings can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Capital Goods industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Raffles United Holdings 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Raffles United Holdings 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Raffles United Holdings in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Misc. Capital Goods industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Raffles United Holdings in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. Now Raffles United Holdings can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Raffles United Holdings 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 Raffles United Holdings External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Raffles United Holdings are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Raffles United Holdings is facing in Misc. Capital Goods sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Raffles United Holdings 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 Raffles United Holdings prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Raffles United Holdings 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry.
Increasing wage structure of Raffles United Holdings
– 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 Raffles United Holdings.
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 Raffles United Holdings business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Raffles United Holdings in the Misc. Capital Goods sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Raffles United Holdings.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Raffles United Holdings has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Raffles United Holdings needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Misc. Capital Goods 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.
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. Raffles United Holdings 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Capital Goods industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Raffles United Holdings can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Raffles United Holdings may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Capital Goods sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Raffles United Holdings Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Raffles United Holdings 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 Raffles United Holdings 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 Raffles United Holdings 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 Raffles United Holdings 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 Raffles United Holdings needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.