SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Safari Investments RSA Ltd (South Africa)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Safari Investments RSA Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, increasing transportation and logistics costs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Safari Investments RSA Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Safari Investments RSA Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Safari Investments RSA Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Safari Investments RSA 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 Safari Investments RSA Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Safari Investments RSA Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Safari Investments RSA Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Africa
4. Making a Construction Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Safari Investments RSA Ltd
Strengths of Safari Investments RSA Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Safari Investments RSA Ltd are -
Learning organization
- Safari Investments RSA 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 Safari Investments RSA Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Safari Investments RSA Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Construction Services
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd is one of the leading players in the Construction Services industry in South Africa. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Construction Services industry in South Africa but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Safari Investments RSA Ltd in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Safari Investments RSA Ltd staying ahead in the Construction Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Safari Investments RSA 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Safari Investments RSA Ltd comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Construction 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Construction Services industry
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Safari Investments RSA Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Construction Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Safari Investments RSA Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd is one of the leading players in the Construction Services 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.
Training and development
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Construction Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Safari Investments RSA Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Construction Services sector.
Analytics focus
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd 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 Construction Services industry. The technology infrastructure of South Africa 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Safari Investments RSA Ltd in Construction Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Safari Investments RSA Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Safari Investments RSA Ltd are -
Need for greater diversity
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Safari Investments RSA Ltd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Safari Investments RSA Ltd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Safari Investments RSA 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 Construction Services industry over the last five years. Safari Investments RSA 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of South Africa, Safari Investments RSA Ltd needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Safari Investments RSA Ltd 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 harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Safari Investments RSA Ltd is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Safari Investments RSA Ltd to provide better information regarding Construction Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Construction Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in South Africa, Safari Investments RSA 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 Construction Services industry.
Employees’ less understanding of Safari Investments RSA Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Safari Investments RSA 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Safari Investments RSA Ltd is just above the Construction Services 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Safari Investments RSA Ltd has high operating costs in the Construction Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Safari Investments RSA Ltd lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring in Construction Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Safari Investments RSA 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.
Safari Investments RSA Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Safari Investments RSA Ltd are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Safari Investments RSA Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Safari Investments RSA Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Construction Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, 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. Safari Investments RSA Ltd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– Safari Investments RSA 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Construction Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Safari Investments RSA Ltd can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Safari Investments RSA 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 Construction Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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 Safari Investments RSA 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Safari Investments RSA Ltd 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 Safari Investments RSA Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Construction 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Safari Investments RSA Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Construction 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Safari Investments RSA Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Construction Services industry. This can help Safari Investments RSA Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Safari Investments RSA Ltd products in the Construction Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Safari Investments RSA 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 Safari Investments RSA 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Safari Investments RSA Ltd to increase its market reach. Safari Investments RSA 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Safari Investments RSA 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.
Threats Safari Investments RSA Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Safari Investments RSA Ltd are -
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 Safari Investments RSA Ltd.
Increasing wage structure of Safari Investments RSA Ltd
– 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 Safari Investments RSA Ltd.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Safari Investments RSA 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 Construction Services sector.
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.
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 Safari Investments RSA Ltd in the Construction Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Safari Investments RSA 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. Safari Investments RSA Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Construction Services industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Safari Investments RSA 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 Construction Services industry regulations.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Construction Services industry are lowering. It can presents Safari Investments RSA Ltd with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Construction Services sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Safari Investments RSA Ltd in Construction Services industry. The Construction 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.
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. Safari Investments RSA 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.
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 Safari Investments RSA Ltd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Safari Investments RSA 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 Safari Investments RSA Ltd prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Safari Investments RSA Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Safari Investments RSA 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 Safari Investments RSA 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 Safari Investments RSA 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 Safari Investments RSA 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 Safari Investments RSA Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
