SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Dragon Victory (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Dragon Victory is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, wage bills are increasing, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is backlash against globalization, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, technology disruption, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Dragon Victory can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Dragon Victory, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Dragon Victory 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 Dragon Victory can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Dragon Victory
2. Improving business portfolio management of Dragon Victory
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Consumer Financial Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Dragon Victory
Strengths of Dragon Victory | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Dragon Victory are -
Learning organization
- Dragon Victory 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 Dragon Victory is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Dragon Victory emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Dragon Victory is present in almost all the verticals within the Consumer Financial Services industry. This has provided Dragon Victory 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Dragon Victory comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Consumer Financial 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.
Digital Transformation in Consumer Financial Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Dragon Victory digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Dragon Victory 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Dragon Victory 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Dragon Victory is one of the leading players in the Consumer Financial Services 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.
High brand equity
– Dragon Victory has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Dragon Victory to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Dragon Victory 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Consumer Financial Services industry
– Dragon Victory has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Dragon Victory to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Consumer Financial Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Dragon Victory to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Training and development
– Dragon Victory has one of the best training and development program in Financial 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Consumer Financial Services industry
– Dragon Victory is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Organizational Resilience of Dragon Victory
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Dragon Victory does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses of Dragon Victory | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Dragon Victory are -
High dependence on Dragon Victory ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Dragon Victory still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Consumer Financial Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Dragon Victory has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Dragon Victory is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Consumer Financial Services industry, but Dragon Victory needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Dragon Victory to focus more on services in the Consumer Financial Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ less understanding of Dragon Victory strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Dragon Victory 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Dragon Victory has some of the most successful models in the Consumer Financial Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Dragon Victory should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Dragon Victory has high operating costs in the Consumer Financial Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Dragon Victory lucrative customers.
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 Dragon Victory supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Dragon Victory is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Dragon Victory vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Dragon Victory needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Dragon Victory 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 Dragon Victory, in the dynamic environment of Consumer Financial Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Dragon Victory 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 Dragon Victory needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Consumer Financial Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Dragon Victory can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Dragon Victory is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Consumer Financial Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Dragon Victory 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.
Dragon Victory Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Dragon Victory are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Consumer Financial Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Dragon Victory can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Dragon Victory has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Consumer Financial Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Dragon Victory to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Dragon Victory to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Dragon Victory can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Dragon Victory can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Consumer Financial Services 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Dragon Victory can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Consumer Financial 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 Consumer Financial Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Dragon Victory 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. Dragon Victory 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 Consumer Financial Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Dragon Victory in the Consumer Financial Services industry. Now Dragon Victory can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Dragon Victory 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Dragon Victory 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 Dragon Victory to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Dragon Victory has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Consumer Financial Services industry. This can help Dragon Victory to build a more holistic ecosystem for Dragon Victory products in the Consumer Financial Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Dragon Victory 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Dragon Victory in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Consumer Financial Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Developing new processes and practices
– Dragon Victory can develop new processes and procedures in Consumer Financial 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.
Threats Dragon Victory External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Dragon Victory are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Dragon Victory may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Consumer Financial Services sector.
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 Dragon Victory.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Dragon Victory is facing in Consumer Financial Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Dragon Victory in the Consumer Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Dragon Victory 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Dragon Victory in Consumer Financial Services industry. The Consumer Financial 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.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Dragon Victory
– 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 Dragon Victory.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Dragon Victory has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Consumer Financial Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Dragon Victory needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Consumer Financial 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.
Environmental challenges
– Dragon Victory 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. Dragon Victory can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Consumer Financial Services industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Consumer Financial Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Dragon Victory can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Dragon Victory business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Dragon Victory 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 Consumer Financial Services industry and other sectors.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Dragon Victory Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Dragon Victory 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 Dragon Victory 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 Dragon Victory 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 Dragon Victory 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 Dragon Victory needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
