Park Lawn (PLC) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Park Lawn (Canada)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Park Lawn is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing energy prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is backlash against globalization, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Park Lawn

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Park Lawn can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Park Lawn, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Park Lawn 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Park Lawn can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Park Lawn
2. Improving business portfolio management of Park Lawn
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Canada
4. Making a Personal Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Park Lawn

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Strengths of Park Lawn | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Park Lawn are -

Digital Transformation in Personal Services industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Park Lawn digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Park Lawn 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Park Lawn has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Park Lawn staying ahead in the Personal Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Learning organization

- Park Lawn 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 Park Lawn is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Park Lawn emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Diverse revenue streams

– Park Lawn is present in almost all the verticals within the Personal Services industry. This has provided Park Lawn 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.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Park Lawn has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Park Lawn 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 Personal Services

– Park Lawn is one of the leading players in the Personal Services industry in Canada. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Personal Services industry in Canada but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Park Lawn in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Park Lawn in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Park Lawn has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Park Lawn to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Park Lawn 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.

Innovation driven organization

– Park Lawn is one of the most innovative firm in Personal Services sector.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Park Lawn has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Personal Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Park Lawn have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Park Lawn comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Personal 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.

Analytics focus

– Park Lawn 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 Personal Services industry. The technology infrastructure of Canada 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.

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Weaknesses of Park Lawn | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Park Lawn are -

Need for greater diversity

– Park Lawn has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.

High 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 Park Lawn supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Park Lawn is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Park Lawn vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Park Lawn has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Personal Services industry over the last five years. Park Lawn 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.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Park Lawn is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Personal Services industry, but Park Lawn needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Park Lawn to focus more on services in the Personal Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Park Lawn needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Personal Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Park Lawn can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Park Lawn is planning to shift buying processes online.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at Park Lawn, in the dynamic environment of Personal Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Park Lawn has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Park Lawn 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 Personal Services industry using digital technology.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Park Lawn 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.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of Canada, Park Lawn needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

Skills based hiring in Personal Services industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Park Lawn 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.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Park Lawn is just above the Personal Services 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.

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Park Lawn Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Park Lawn are -

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Park Lawn 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 Park Lawn to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Park Lawn 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.

Loyalty marketing

– Park Lawn 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Park Lawn can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Personal 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.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Park Lawn in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Personal Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Personal Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Park Lawn 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. Park Lawn 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.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Personal Services industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Park Lawn in the Personal Services industry. Now Park Lawn can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Park Lawn 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 Personal Services industry.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Park Lawn 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 Park Lawn 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, Park Lawn is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Park Lawn can utilize new technology in the field of Personal Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Personal Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Park Lawn can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

Developing new processes and practices

– Park Lawn can develop new processes and procedures in Personal 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Park Lawn has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Park Lawn to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Park Lawn to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

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Threats Park Lawn External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Park Lawn are -

Consumer confidence and its impact on Park Lawn 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 Personal Services industry and other sectors.

Regulatory challenges

– Park Lawn 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 Personal Services industry regulations.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Park Lawn 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 Park Lawn 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 Park Lawn.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Park Lawn has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Park Lawn needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal 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. Park Lawn will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.

High level of anxiety and lack of motivation

– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Park Lawn needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Personal Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Park Lawn 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.

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 Park Lawn business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Park Lawn 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 Personal 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.

Environmental challenges

– Park Lawn 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. Park Lawn can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Personal Services industry.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Park Lawn may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Personal Services sector.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Park Lawn Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Park Lawn 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 Park Lawn 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 Park Lawn 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 Park Lawn 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 Park Lawn needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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