MAS Real Estate (MSPJ) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for MAS Real Estate (South Africa)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , MAS Real Estate is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is backlash against globalization, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing energy prices,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that MAS Real Estate can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the MAS Real Estate, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which MAS Real Estate 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 MAS Real Estate can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of MAS Real Estate
2. Improving business portfolio management of MAS Real Estate
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Africa
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of MAS Real Estate
Strengths of MAS Real Estate | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of MAS Real Estate are -
Organizational Resilience of MAS Real Estate
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing MAS Real Estate does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– MAS Real Estate has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of MAS Real Estate have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- MAS Real Estate 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 MAS Real Estate is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at MAS Real Estate emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– MAS Real Estate has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled MAS Real Estate to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped MAS Real Estate to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For MAS Real Estate digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. MAS Real Estate 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of MAS Real Estate in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– MAS Real Estate has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – MAS Real Estate staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– MAS Real Estate is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided MAS Real Estate 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of MAS Real Estate in the sector have low bargaining power. MAS Real Estate has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps MAS Real Estate to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– MAS Real Estate is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that MAS Real Estate 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– MAS Real Estate has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. MAS Real Estate 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.
Weaknesses of MAS Real Estate | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of MAS Real Estate are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of MAS Real Estate, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact 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 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 MAS Real Estate supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, MAS Real Estate is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left MAS Real Estate vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– MAS Real Estate 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that MAS Real Estate needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at MAS Real Estate can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as MAS Real Estate is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, MAS Real Estate 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at MAS Real Estate, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. MAS Real Estate has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
MAS Real Estate has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, MAS Real Estate 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 industry using digital technology.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As MAS Real Estate is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of MAS Real Estate is just above the 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, MAS Real Estate has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. MAS Real Estate 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.
MAS Real Estate Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of MAS Real Estate are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help MAS Real Estate to increase its market reach. MAS Real Estate 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– MAS Real Estate 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of MAS Real Estate has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help MAS Real Estate to build a more holistic ecosystem for MAS Real Estate products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects MAS Real Estate can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. MAS Real Estate can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Developing new processes and practices
– MAS Real Estate can develop new processes and procedures in 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. MAS Real Estate can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for MAS Real Estate in the industry. Now MAS Real Estate can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, MAS Real Estate is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. MAS Real Estate can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for MAS Real Estate 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 MAS Real Estate to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help MAS Real Estate 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. MAS Real Estate 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. MAS Real Estate 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, MAS Real Estate 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 MAS Real Estate to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Threats MAS Real Estate External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of MAS Real Estate are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents MAS Real Estate with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the 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 MAS Real Estate 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 MAS Real Estate in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– MAS Real Estate 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 industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on MAS Real Estate 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 industry and other sectors.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for MAS Real Estate in industry. The 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.
Environmental challenges
– MAS Real Estate 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. MAS Real Estate can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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. MAS Real Estate 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 industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. MAS Real Estate can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. MAS Real Estate needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of MAS Real Estate
– 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 MAS Real Estate.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that MAS Real Estate is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of MAS Real Estate Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at MAS Real Estate 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 MAS Real Estate 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 MAS Real Estate 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 MAS Real Estate 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 MAS Real Estate needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.