Phoenix New Media (FENG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Broadcasting & Cable TV
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Phoenix New Media (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Phoenix New Media is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Phoenix New Media
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Phoenix New Media can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Phoenix New Media, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Phoenix New Media
2. Improving business portfolio management of Phoenix New Media
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Broadcasting & Cable TV sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Phoenix New Media
Strengths of Phoenix New Media | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Phoenix New Media are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Phoenix New Media comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Broadcasting & Cable TV 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Phoenix New Media 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.
Organizational Resilience of Phoenix New Media
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Phoenix New Media does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Innovation driven organization
– Phoenix New Media is one of the most innovative firm in Broadcasting & Cable TV sector.
Training and development
– Phoenix New Media has one of the best training and development program in Services 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
– Phoenix New Media has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Phoenix New Media have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry
– Phoenix New Media has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Phoenix New Media to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Phoenix New Media to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry
– Phoenix New Media is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Phoenix New Media emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Phoenix New Media has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Phoenix New Media staying ahead in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Phoenix New Media in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Phoenix New Media has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Phoenix New Media to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Phoenix New Media is present in almost all the verticals within the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. This has provided Phoenix New Media 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.
Weaknesses of Phoenix New Media | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Phoenix New Media are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Phoenix New Media is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry, but Phoenix New Media needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Phoenix New Media to focus more on services in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Phoenix New Media is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Phoenix New Media to provide better information regarding Broadcasting & Cable TV products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Phoenix New Media needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Phoenix New Media can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Phoenix New Media is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Phoenix New Media 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Phoenix New Media 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Phoenix New Media, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Broadcasting & Cable TV 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Phoenix New Media 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry using digital technology.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Phoenix New Media, in the dynamic environment of Broadcasting & Cable TV industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Phoenix New Media 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry, Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Phoenix New Media still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Phoenix New Media has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Phoenix New Media has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Phoenix New Media Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Phoenix New Media are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Phoenix New Media 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Phoenix New Media has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Broadcasting & Cable TV sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Phoenix New Media to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Phoenix New Media 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Phoenix New Media 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. Phoenix New Media 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Phoenix New Media can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Broadcasting & Cable TV 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Phoenix New Media 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Phoenix New Media can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Phoenix New Media operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Broadcasting & Cable TV sector.
Loyalty marketing
– Phoenix New Media 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.
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. Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media to increase its market reach. Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. This can help Phoenix New Media to build a more holistic ecosystem for Phoenix New Media products in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Phoenix New Media is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Phoenix New Media can utilize new technology in the field of Broadcasting & Cable TV industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats Phoenix New Media External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Phoenix New Media are -
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 Phoenix New Media business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Phoenix New Media is facing in Broadcasting & Cable TV sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media
– 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 Phoenix New Media.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Phoenix New Media has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Phoenix New Media needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Broadcasting & Cable TV 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Phoenix New Media may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Broadcasting & Cable TV sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Phoenix New Media 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– Phoenix New Media 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 Broadcasting & Cable TV industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– Phoenix New Media 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. Phoenix New Media can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Broadcasting & Cable TV industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Broadcasting & Cable TV industry are lowering. It can presents Phoenix New Media with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Broadcasting & Cable TV sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Phoenix New Media Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media 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 Phoenix New Media needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
