Cayman Golden Century (900280) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Auto & Truck Parts
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Cayman Golden Century (South Korea)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Cayman Golden Century is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, technology disruption,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Cayman Golden Century
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Cayman Golden Century can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cayman Golden Century, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Cayman Golden Century
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cayman Golden Century
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Korea
4. Making a Auto & Truck Parts sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Cayman Golden Century
Strengths of Cayman Golden Century | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cayman Golden Century are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Cayman Golden Century in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Cayman Golden Century has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Cayman Golden Century to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Cayman Golden Century 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Cayman Golden Century is present in almost all the verticals within the Auto & Truck Parts industry. This has provided Cayman Golden Century 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.
Organizational Resilience of Cayman Golden Century
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Cayman Golden Century does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Cayman Golden Century comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Auto & Truck Parts 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry
– Cayman Golden Century has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Cayman Golden Century to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Auto & Truck Parts industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Cayman Golden Century to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Auto & Truck Parts industry
– Cayman Golden Century is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Cayman Golden Century 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Cayman Golden Century has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Cayman Golden Century staying ahead in the Auto & Truck Parts industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Cayman Golden Century emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Cayman Golden Century has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Auto & Truck Parts industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Cayman Golden Century have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Cayman Golden Century 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry. The technology infrastructure of South Korea 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.
Weaknesses of Cayman Golden Century | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Cayman Golden Century are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Cayman Golden Century 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry using digital technology.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Cayman Golden Century has some of the most successful models in the Auto & Truck Parts industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Cayman Golden Century should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Cayman Golden Century is just above the Auto & Truck Parts 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Auto & Truck Parts industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Cayman Golden Century can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Cayman Golden Century is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ less understanding of Cayman Golden Century strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Cayman Golden Century 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Cayman Golden Century is one of the leading players in the Auto & Truck Parts industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Auto & Truck Parts industry in last five years.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Cayman Golden Century 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.
Skills based hiring in Auto & Truck Parts industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Cayman Golden Century 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.
High dependence on Cayman Golden Century ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Cayman Golden Century still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Auto & Truck Parts industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Cayman Golden Century has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Cayman Golden Century is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Cayman Golden Century to provide better information regarding Auto & Truck Parts products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Cayman Golden Century Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Cayman Golden Century are -
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 Cayman Golden Century 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Auto & Truck Parts industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Cayman Golden Century can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Cayman Golden Century can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Cayman Golden Century operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Auto & Truck Parts sector.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Cayman Golden Century to increase its market reach. Cayman Golden Century 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
– Cayman Golden Century 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Cayman Golden Century is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Cayman Golden Century can utilize new technology in the field of Auto & Truck Parts industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Cayman Golden Century 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Cayman Golden Century has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Auto & Truck Parts sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Cayman Golden Century to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Cayman Golden Century to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Auto & Truck Parts industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cayman Golden Century 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. Cayman Golden Century 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Cayman Golden Century can develop new processes and procedures in Auto & Truck Parts 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Cayman Golden Century 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Cayman Golden Century are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Cayman Golden Century has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Auto & Truck Parts industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Cayman Golden Century needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Auto & Truck Parts 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.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Auto & Truck Parts industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Cayman Golden Century can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Cayman Golden Century.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Cayman Golden Century in Auto & Truck Parts industry. The Auto & Truck Parts 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century prominent markets.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Cayman Golden Century may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Auto & Truck Parts sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Cayman Golden Century 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Cayman Golden Century 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Cayman Golden Century
– 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 Cayman Golden Century.
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 Cayman Golden Century business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Auto & Truck Parts industry are lowering. It can presents Cayman Golden Century with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Auto & Truck Parts sector.
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. Cayman Golden Century 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cayman Golden Century Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century 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 Cayman Golden Century needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.