SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Hosken Consolidated (South Africa)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Hosken Consolidated is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Hosken Consolidated
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Hosken Consolidated can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hosken Consolidated, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Hosken Consolidated
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hosken Consolidated
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Africa
4. Making a Casinos & Gaming sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Hosken Consolidated
Strengths of Hosken Consolidated | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hosken Consolidated are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Hosken Consolidated has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Casinos & Gaming industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Hosken Consolidated have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Hosken Consolidated has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Hosken Consolidated 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Hosken Consolidated has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Hosken Consolidated staying ahead in the Casinos & Gaming industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Digital Transformation in Casinos & Gaming industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Hosken Consolidated digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Hosken Consolidated 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Hosken Consolidated is one of the leading players in the Casinos & Gaming industry in South Africa. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in South Africa. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Hosken Consolidated
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Hosken Consolidated does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Hosken Consolidated in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Hosken Consolidated has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Hosken Consolidated to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Hosken Consolidated has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Hosken Consolidated to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Hosken Consolidated 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Hosken Consolidated is one of the most innovative firm in Casinos & Gaming sector.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Hosken Consolidated in Casinos & Gaming industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management in the Casinos & Gaming industry
– Hosken Consolidated is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of Hosken Consolidated | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Hosken Consolidated are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Hosken Consolidated has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Casinos & Gaming industry over the last five years. Hosken Consolidated 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.
Skills based hiring in Casinos & Gaming industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Hosken Consolidated 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Hosken Consolidated has some of the most successful models in the Casinos & Gaming industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Hosken Consolidated should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Casinos & Gaming industry, Hosken Consolidated 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of South Africa, Hosken Consolidated needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Hosken Consolidated is one of the leading players in the Casinos & Gaming industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Casinos & Gaming industry in last five years.
Need for greater diversity
– Hosken Consolidated 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Hosken Consolidated strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Hosken Consolidated 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 dependence on Hosken Consolidated ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Hosken Consolidated still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Casinos & Gaming industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Hosken Consolidated has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Hosken Consolidated is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Casinos & Gaming industry, but Hosken Consolidated needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Hosken Consolidated to focus more on services in the Casinos & Gaming industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Hosken Consolidated 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.
Hosken Consolidated Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Hosken Consolidated are -
Loyalty marketing
– Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Casinos & Gaming industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Hosken Consolidated 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.
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. Hosken Consolidated can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Hosken Consolidated can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Casinos & Gaming 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 Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated 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 Casinos & Gaming industry.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Hosken Consolidated has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Casinos & Gaming sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Hosken Consolidated to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Hosken Consolidated to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Hosken Consolidated has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Casinos & Gaming industry. This can help Hosken Consolidated to build a more holistic ecosystem for Hosken Consolidated products in the Casinos & Gaming industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Casinos & Gaming industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Hosken Consolidated 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. Hosken Consolidated 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.
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 Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Hosken Consolidated are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Hosken Consolidated is facing in Casinos & Gaming sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Hosken Consolidated 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 Casinos & Gaming industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Hosken Consolidated in Casinos & Gaming industry. The Casinos & Gaming 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Casinos & Gaming industry are lowering. It can presents Hosken Consolidated with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Casinos & Gaming sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Casinos & Gaming industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated in the Casinos & Gaming sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Hosken Consolidated 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 Casinos & Gaming industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Hosken Consolidated may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Casinos & Gaming sector.
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. Hosken Consolidated needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Casinos & Gaming industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Hosken Consolidated 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 Casinos & Gaming industry and other sectors.
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 Hosken Consolidated Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated 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 Hosken Consolidated needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.