SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Firemans Contractors (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Firemans Contractors is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, geopolitical disruptions, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Firemans Contractors
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Firemans Contractors can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Firemans Contractors, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Firemans Contractors 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 Firemans Contractors can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Firemans Contractors
2. Improving business portfolio management of Firemans Contractors
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Construction Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Firemans Contractors
Strengths of Firemans Contractors | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Firemans Contractors are -
High brand equity
– Firemans Contractors has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Firemans Contractors to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Construction Services industry
– Firemans Contractors has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Firemans Contractors to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Construction Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Firemans Contractors to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Construction Services industry
– Firemans Contractors 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
- Firemans Contractors 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 Firemans Contractors is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Firemans Contractors emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Firemans Contractors in Construction Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Construction Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Firemans Contractors digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Firemans Contractors 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.
Training and development
– Firemans Contractors has one of the best training and development program in Capital Goods industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Firemans Contractors has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Construction Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Firemans Contractors have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Firemans Contractors comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Construction Services industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Firemans Contractors has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Firemans Contractors 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Firemans Contractors is one of the most innovative firm in Construction Services sector.
Analytics focus
– Firemans Contractors is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Construction Services industry. The technology infrastructure of United States 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 Firemans Contractors | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Firemans Contractors are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Firemans Contractors is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Construction Services industry, but Firemans Contractors needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Firemans Contractors to focus more on services in the Construction Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Firemans Contractors supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Firemans Contractors is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Firemans Contractors vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Firemans Contractors needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Construction Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Firemans Contractors can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Firemans Contractors is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Firemans Contractors is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Firemans Contractors to provide better information regarding Construction Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Firemans Contractors 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Firemans Contractors 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Firemans Contractors, in the dynamic environment of Construction Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Firemans Contractors has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Firemans Contractors has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Construction Services industry over the last five years. Firemans Contractors 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.
High dependence on Firemans Contractors ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Firemans Contractors still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Construction Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Firemans Contractors has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Firemans Contractors is one of the leading players in the Construction Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Construction Services industry in last five years.
Lack of clear differentiation of Firemans Contractors products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Firemans Contractors needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Firemans Contractors Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Firemans Contractors are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Firemans Contractors 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
– Firemans Contractors can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Construction Services industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Construction Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Firemans Contractors 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. Firemans Contractors 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
– Firemans Contractors can develop new processes and procedures in Construction Services industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Firemans Contractors 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 Firemans Contractors to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Firemans Contractors 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Firemans Contractors in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Construction Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Firemans Contractors has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Construction Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Firemans Contractors to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Firemans Contractors to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Firemans Contractors 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 Firemans Contractors to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Firemans Contractors is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Firemans Contractors can utilize new technology in the field of Construction Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Firemans Contractors to increase its market reach. Firemans Contractors 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
– Firemans Contractors 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Construction Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Firemans Contractors can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Firemans Contractors External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Firemans Contractors are -
Regulatory challenges
– Firemans Contractors needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Construction Services industry regulations.
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. Firemans Contractors needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Construction Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Firemans Contractors 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 Firemans Contractors prominent markets.
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 Firemans Contractors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Construction Services industry are lowering. It can presents Firemans Contractors with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Construction Services sector.
Environmental challenges
– Firemans Contractors 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. Firemans Contractors can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Construction Services industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Firemans Contractors in Construction Services industry. The Construction Services industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Firemans Contractors 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 Construction Services industry.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Firemans Contractors 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Firemans Contractors has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Construction Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Firemans Contractors needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Construction Services 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.
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. Firemans Contractors 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Firemans Contractors may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Construction Services sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Firemans Contractors Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Firemans Contractors 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 Firemans Contractors 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 Firemans Contractors 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 Firemans Contractors 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 Firemans Contractors needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
