SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Lifestyle Comnts (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Lifestyle Comnts is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Lifestyle Comnts can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lifestyle Comnts, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Lifestyle Comnts
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lifestyle Comnts
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Construction Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Lifestyle Comnts
Strengths of Lifestyle Comnts | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lifestyle Comnts are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Ability to lead change in Construction Services
– Lifestyle Comnts is one of the leading players in the Construction Services industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Construction Services industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Lifestyle Comnts in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Innovation driven organization
– Lifestyle Comnts is one of the most innovative firm in Construction Services sector.
Analytics focus
– Lifestyle Comnts 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 Australia 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Organizational Resilience of Lifestyle Comnts
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Lifestyle Comnts does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Lifestyle Comnts emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Lifestyle Comnts in Construction Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High brand equity
– Lifestyle Comnts has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Lifestyle Comnts to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Construction Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Lifestyle Comnts digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Lifestyle Comnts in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Lifestyle Comnts has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Lifestyle Comnts to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Lifestyle Comnts | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Lifestyle Comnts are -
Need for greater diversity
– Lifestyle Comnts 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Construction Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Lifestyle Comnts 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 Construction Services industry.
Employees’ less understanding of Lifestyle Comnts strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Lifestyle Comnts don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Lifestyle Comnts needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Construction Services industry, Lifestyle Comnts 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, Lifestyle Comnts is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Lifestyle Comnts to provide better information regarding Construction Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Lifestyle Comnts is just above the Construction 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Lifestyle Comnts, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Construction Services 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Lifestyle Comnts, in the dynamic environment of Construction Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Lifestyle Comnts has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High dependence on Lifestyle Comnts ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Lifestyle Comnts 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. Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Lifestyle Comnts Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Lifestyle Comnts are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Lifestyle Comnts can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Lifestyle Comnts operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Construction Services sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Lifestyle Comnts is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Lifestyle Comnts to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Lifestyle Comnts can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Lifestyle Comnts has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Construction Services industry. This can help Lifestyle Comnts to build a more holistic ecosystem for Lifestyle Comnts products in the Construction Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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 Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Lifestyle Comnts 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.
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. Lifestyle Comnts 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. Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Lifestyle Comnts 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 Construction Services industry.
Threats Lifestyle Comnts External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Lifestyle Comnts are -
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. Lifestyle Comnts needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Construction Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Lifestyle Comnts 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. Lifestyle Comnts can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors 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
– Lifestyle Comnts 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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Lifestyle Comnts has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Construction Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Lifestyle Comnts 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lifestyle Comnts is facing in Construction Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Lifestyle Comnts 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.
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 Lifestyle Comnts.
Increasing wage structure of Lifestyle Comnts
– 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 Lifestyle Comnts.
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 Lifestyle Comnts in the Construction Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Lifestyle Comnts Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts 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 Lifestyle Comnts needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.