A One Alform (234070) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Rental & Leasing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for A One Alform (South Korea)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , A One Alform is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that A One Alform can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the A One Alform, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which A One Alform 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 A One Alform can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of A One Alform
2. Improving business portfolio management of A One Alform
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Korea
4. Making a Rental & Leasing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of A One Alform
Strengths of A One Alform | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of A One Alform are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of A One Alform in the Services sector have low bargaining power. A One Alform has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps A One Alform to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of A One Alform
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing A One Alform does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in Rental & Leasing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For A One Alform digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. A One Alform 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– A One Alform has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. A One Alform 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.
Ability to lead change in Rental & Leasing
– A One Alform is one of the leading players in the Rental & Leasing industry in South Korea. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Rental & Leasing industry in South Korea but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled A One Alform in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– A One Alform has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Rental & Leasing industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of A One Alform have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of A One Alform in Rental & Leasing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– A One Alform has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – A One Alform staying ahead in the Rental & Leasing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- A One Alform 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 A One Alform is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at A One Alform emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that A One Alform 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– A One Alform is one of the leading players in the Rental & Leasing 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Rental & Leasing industry
– A One Alform 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 A One Alform | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of A One Alform are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of A One Alform, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Rental & Leasing 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.
Skills based hiring in Rental & Leasing industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at A One Alform 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 A One Alform has some of the most successful models in the Rental & Leasing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. A One Alform should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that A One Alform needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Rental & Leasing industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at A One Alform can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as A One Alform is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As A One Alform is one of the leading players in the Rental & Leasing industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Rental & Leasing industry in last five years.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, A One Alform has high operating costs in the Rental & Leasing industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract A One Alform lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at A One Alform, in the dynamic environment of Rental & Leasing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. A One Alform has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Rental & Leasing industry, A One Alform 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.
High dependence on A One Alform ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of A One Alform still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Rental & Leasing industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though A One Alform has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Lack of clear differentiation of A One Alform products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, A One Alform needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of A One Alform is just above the Rental & Leasing 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.
A One Alform Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of A One Alform are -
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of A One Alform has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Rental & Leasing industry. This can help A One Alform to build a more holistic ecosystem for A One Alform products in the Rental & Leasing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– A One Alform 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at A One Alform 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 Rental & Leasing industry.
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 A One Alform 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for A One Alform 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects A One Alform can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Developing new processes and practices
– A One Alform can develop new processes and procedures in Rental & Leasing 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.
Buying journey improvements
– A One Alform can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Rental & Leasing 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Rental & Leasing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. A One Alform 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 A One Alform in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Rental & Leasing industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– A One Alform has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Rental & Leasing sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled A One Alform to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help A One Alform 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 Rental & Leasing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. A One Alform 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. A One Alform 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, A One Alform is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. A One Alform can utilize new technology in the field of Rental & Leasing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats A One Alform External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of A One Alform are -
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 A One Alform in the Rental & Leasing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 A One Alform business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. A One Alform 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Rental & Leasing industry are lowering. It can presents A One Alform with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Rental & Leasing sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Rental & Leasing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. A One Alform can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that A One Alform is facing in Rental & Leasing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for A One Alform in Rental & Leasing industry. The Rental & Leasing 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, A One Alform 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 A One Alform prominent markets.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on A One Alform 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 Rental & Leasing industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of A One Alform
– 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 A One Alform.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– A One Alform 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 Rental & Leasing industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of A One Alform Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at A One Alform 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 A One Alform 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 A One Alform 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 A One Alform 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 A One Alform needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.