Silla Textile (1000) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Silla Textile (South Korea)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Silla Textile is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, technology disruption, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Silla Textile can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Silla Textile, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Silla Textile 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 Silla Textile can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Silla Textile
2. Improving business portfolio management of Silla Textile
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Korea
4. Making a Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Silla Textile
Strengths of Silla Textile | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Silla Textile are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Silla Textile is one of the leading players in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry in South Korea. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in South Korea. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Silla Textile 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry
– Silla Textile is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry
– Silla Textile has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Silla Textile to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Silla Textile to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Silla Textile has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Silla Textile staying ahead in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Silla Textile
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Silla Textile does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Silla Textile has one of the best training and development program in Basic Materials 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Silla Textile has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Silla Textile 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Silla Textile has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Silla Textile have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Silla Textile 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 Silla Textile is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Silla Textile emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Silla Textile in Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Silla Textile comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber 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.
Weaknesses of Silla Textile | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Silla Textile are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Silla Textile has some of the most successful models in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Silla Textile should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of South Korea, Silla Textile needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Silla Textile is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Silla Textile to provide better information regarding Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Silla Textile is one of the leading players in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry in last five years.
Need for greater diversity
– Silla Textile 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Silla Textile has high operating costs in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Silla Textile lucrative customers.
Employees’ less understanding of Silla Textile strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Silla Textile 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Silla Textile has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry over the last five years. Silla Textile 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Silla Textile, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Silla Textile, in the dynamic environment of Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Silla Textile has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Lack of clear differentiation of Silla Textile products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Silla Textile needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Silla Textile Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Silla Textile are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Silla Textile can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Silla Textile can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Silla Textile 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. Silla Textile 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Silla Textile in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Manufacturing automation
– Silla Textile can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Silla Textile 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Silla Textile can develop new processes and procedures in Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber 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.
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. Silla Textile can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Silla Textile to increase its market reach. Silla Textile 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Silla Textile has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry. This can help Silla Textile to build a more holistic ecosystem for Silla Textile products in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Silla Textile can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Silla Textile is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Silla Textile can utilize new technology in the field of Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Silla Textile has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Silla Textile to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Silla Textile to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Silla Textile External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Silla Textile are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Silla Textile in Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry. The Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber 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
– Silla Textile 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. Silla Textile can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Silla Textile is facing in Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Silla Textile may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber 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. Silla Textile 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.
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. Silla Textile needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Silla Textile in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Silla Textile has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Silla Textile needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Silla Textile 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 Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry and other sectors.
Regulatory challenges
– Silla Textile 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 Chemicals - Plastics & Rubber industry regulations.
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 Silla Textile business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Silla Textile high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Increasing wage structure of Silla Textile
– 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 Silla Textile.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Silla Textile Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Silla Textile 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 Silla Textile 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 Silla Textile 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 Silla Textile 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 Silla Textile needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
