SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Ace Achieve Infocom (Singapore)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Ace Achieve Infocom is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is backlash against globalization, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Ace Achieve Infocom
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Ace Achieve Infocom can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ace Achieve Infocom, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Ace Achieve Infocom can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Ace Achieve Infocom
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ace Achieve Infocom
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Singapore
4. Making a Communications Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ace Achieve Infocom
Strengths of Ace Achieve Infocom | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Ace Achieve Infocom are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Ace Achieve Infocom in Communications Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Ace Achieve Infocom has one of the best training and development program in Services 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
- Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Ace Achieve Infocom is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Ace Achieve Infocom emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Communications Services
– Ace Achieve Infocom is one of the leading players in the Communications Services industry in Singapore. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Communications Services industry in Singapore but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Ace Achieve Infocom in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Ace Achieve Infocom has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Communications Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Ace Achieve Infocom have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Ace Achieve Infocom has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
High brand equity
– Ace Achieve Infocom has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Ace Achieve Infocom to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Ace Achieve Infocom has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Ace Achieve Infocom staying ahead in the Communications Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Ace Achieve Infocom has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Ace Achieve Infocom 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Ace Achieve Infocom 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Ace Achieve Infocom comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Communications Services 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Ace Achieve Infocom is present in almost all the verticals within the Communications Services industry. This has provided Ace Achieve Infocom 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.
Weaknesses of Ace Achieve Infocom | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Ace Achieve Infocom are -
Skills based hiring in Communications Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Ace Achieve Infocom 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Ace Achieve Infocom products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Ace Achieve Infocom needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Ace Achieve Infocom 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Singapore, Ace Achieve Infocom needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Communications Services industry using digital technology.
Employees’ less understanding of Ace Achieve Infocom strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Ace Achieve Infocom 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Communications Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Singapore, Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Communications Services industry.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Ace Achieve Infocom is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Ace Achieve Infocom to provide better information regarding Communications Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Ace Achieve Infocom has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Communications Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Ace Achieve Infocom has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Ace Achieve Infocom is one of the leading players in the Communications Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Communications Services industry in last five years.
Ace Achieve Infocom Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Ace Achieve Infocom are -
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. Ace Achieve Infocom can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– Ace Achieve Infocom 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Ace Achieve Infocom is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Ace Achieve Infocom can utilize new technology in the field of Communications Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Ace Achieve Infocom can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Communications Services industry.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Ace Achieve Infocom to increase its market reach. Ace Achieve Infocom 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Ace Achieve Infocom in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Communications Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Ace Achieve Infocom to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Developing new processes and practices
– Ace Achieve Infocom can develop new processes and procedures in Communications Services 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Ace Achieve Infocom has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Communications Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Ace Achieve Infocom to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Ace Achieve Infocom to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Ace Achieve Infocom can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Communications Services 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Ace Achieve Infocom 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.
Threats Ace Achieve Infocom External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Ace Achieve Infocom are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Ace Achieve Infocom is facing in Communications Services 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 Ace Achieve Infocom.
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. Ace Achieve Infocom needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Communications Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Communications Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Ace Achieve Infocom can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Communications Services industry and other sectors.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Ace Achieve Infocom prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Ace Achieve Infocom has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Communications Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ace Achieve Infocom needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Communications Services 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.
Environmental challenges
– Ace Achieve Infocom 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. Ace Achieve Infocom can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Communications Services industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Communications Services industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Ace Achieve Infocom may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Communications Services sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Ace Achieve Infocom in Communications Services industry. The Communications Services 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.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Technology 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ace Achieve Infocom Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Ace Achieve Infocom 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 Ace Achieve Infocom needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
