Global Ship Lease (GSL) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Water Transportation
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Global Ship Lease (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Global Ship Lease is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, wage bills are increasing, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Global Ship Lease
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Global Ship Lease can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Global Ship Lease, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Global Ship Lease 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 Global Ship Lease can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Global Ship Lease
2. Improving business portfolio management of Global Ship Lease
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Water Transportation sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Global Ship Lease
Strengths of Global Ship Lease | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Global Ship Lease are -
Ability to lead change in Water Transportation
– Global Ship Lease is one of the leading players in the Water Transportation industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Water Transportation industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Global Ship Lease in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Global Ship Lease has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Global Ship Lease 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Global Ship Lease has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Global Ship Lease staying ahead in the Water Transportation industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Global Ship Lease is one of the most innovative firm in Water Transportation sector.
Digital Transformation in Water Transportation industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Global Ship Lease digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Global Ship Lease 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.
Organizational Resilience of Global Ship Lease
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Global Ship Lease does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Global Ship Lease 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Global Ship Lease is present in almost all the verticals within the Water Transportation industry. This has provided Global Ship Lease 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Global Ship Lease in the Transportation sector have low bargaining power. Global Ship Lease has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Global Ship Lease to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Global Ship Lease has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Water Transportation industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Global Ship Lease have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Global Ship Lease is one of the leading players in the Water Transportation industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Global Ship Lease comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Water Transportation 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 Global Ship Lease | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Global Ship Lease are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Global Ship Lease needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Global Ship Lease, in the dynamic environment of Water Transportation industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Global Ship Lease has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Global Ship Lease needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Water Transportation industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Global Ship Lease can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Global Ship Lease is planning to shift buying processes online.
Need for greater diversity
– Global Ship Lease 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Global Ship Lease is one of the leading players in the Water Transportation industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Water Transportation industry in last five years.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Global Ship Lease has high operating costs in the Water Transportation industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Global Ship Lease lucrative customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Global Ship Lease is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Water Transportation industry, but Global Ship Lease needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Global Ship Lease to focus more on services in the Water Transportation industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Global Ship Lease 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 Water Transportation industry using digital technology.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Water Transportation industry, Global Ship Lease 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Global Ship Lease is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Global Ship Lease to provide better information regarding Water Transportation products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High dependence on Global Ship Lease ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Global Ship Lease still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Water Transportation industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Global Ship Lease has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Global Ship Lease Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Global Ship Lease are -
Manufacturing automation
– Global Ship Lease can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Water Transportation 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Global Ship Lease 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 Global Ship Lease to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Global Ship Lease can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Water Transportation 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, Global Ship Lease 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Water Transportation industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Global Ship Lease 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. Global Ship Lease 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Global Ship Lease to increase its market reach. Global Ship Lease 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Global Ship Lease in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Water Transportation industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Global Ship Lease 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 Water Transportation industry.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Global Ship Lease can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Global Ship Lease operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Water Transportation sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Global Ship Lease 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 Water Transportation industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Global Ship Lease can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Global Ship Lease 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 Global Ship Lease to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Global Ship Lease 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.
Threats Global Ship Lease External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Global Ship Lease are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Water Transportation industry are lowering. It can presents Global Ship Lease with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Water Transportation sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Global Ship Lease 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 Global Ship Lease 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Global Ship Lease 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 Water Transportation industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Water Transportation industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Global Ship Lease 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 Global Ship Lease is facing in Water Transportation sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Global Ship Lease 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. Global Ship Lease can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Water Transportation industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Global Ship Lease 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 Water Transportation industry and other sectors.
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 Global Ship Lease in the Water Transportation sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Global Ship Lease 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 Water Transportation industry regulations.
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. Global Ship Lease 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.
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 Global Ship Lease.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Global Ship Lease 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Global Ship Lease Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Global Ship Lease 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 Global Ship Lease 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 Global Ship Lease 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 Global Ship Lease 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 Global Ship Lease needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
