Huolinhe Coal A (2128) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Coal
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Huolinhe Coal A (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Huolinhe Coal A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Huolinhe Coal A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Huolinhe Coal A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Huolinhe Coal A 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 Huolinhe Coal A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Huolinhe Coal A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Huolinhe Coal A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Coal sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Huolinhe Coal A
Strengths of Huolinhe Coal A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Huolinhe Coal A are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Huolinhe Coal A comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Coal 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Coal industry
– Huolinhe Coal A has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Huolinhe Coal A to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Coal industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Huolinhe Coal A to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Huolinhe Coal A is one of the most innovative firm in Coal sector.
Ability to lead change in Coal
– Huolinhe Coal A is one of the leading players in the Coal industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Coal industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Huolinhe Coal A in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Huolinhe Coal A 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 Huolinhe Coal A is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Huolinhe Coal A emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Huolinhe Coal A has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Coal industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Huolinhe Coal A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Huolinhe Coal A 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Huolinhe Coal A is present in almost all the verticals within the Coal industry. This has provided Huolinhe Coal A 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Huolinhe Coal A in Coal industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Coal industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Huolinhe Coal A digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Huolinhe Coal A 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.
High brand equity
– Huolinhe Coal A has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Huolinhe Coal A to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Huolinhe Coal A has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Huolinhe Coal A staying ahead in the Coal industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Huolinhe Coal A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Huolinhe Coal A are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Huolinhe Coal A is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Huolinhe Coal A to provide better information regarding Coal products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Huolinhe Coal A is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Coal industry, but Huolinhe Coal A needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Huolinhe Coal A to focus more on services in the Coal industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Huolinhe Coal A has some of the most successful models in the Coal industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Huolinhe Coal A should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Huolinhe Coal A 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 Coal industry using digital technology.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Coal industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Huolinhe Coal A 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 Coal industry.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Huolinhe Coal A, in the dynamic environment of Coal industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Huolinhe Coal A has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Lack of clear differentiation of Huolinhe Coal A products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Huolinhe Coal A needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on Huolinhe Coal A ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Huolinhe Coal A still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Coal industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Huolinhe Coal A has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Huolinhe Coal A needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Huolinhe Coal A 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Huolinhe Coal A is just above the Coal 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.
Huolinhe Coal A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Huolinhe Coal A are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Huolinhe Coal A 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 Huolinhe Coal A to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Coal industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Huolinhe Coal A in the Coal industry. Now Huolinhe Coal A can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Huolinhe Coal A 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Coal industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Huolinhe Coal A can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Huolinhe Coal A 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Huolinhe Coal A has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Coal industry. This can help Huolinhe Coal A to build a more holistic ecosystem for Huolinhe Coal A products in the Coal industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Huolinhe Coal A 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 Coal industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Huolinhe Coal A in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Coal industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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 Huolinhe Coal A 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Coal industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Huolinhe Coal A 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. Huolinhe Coal A 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Huolinhe Coal A has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Coal sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Huolinhe Coal A to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Huolinhe Coal A to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Huolinhe Coal A 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Huolinhe Coal A can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Coal 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.
Threats Huolinhe Coal A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Huolinhe Coal A are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Huolinhe Coal A high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Huolinhe Coal A has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Coal industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Huolinhe Coal A needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Coal 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.
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 Huolinhe Coal A business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Huolinhe Coal A may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Coal sector.
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. Huolinhe Coal A needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Coal industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Coal industry are lowering. It can presents Huolinhe Coal A with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Coal sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Huolinhe Coal A 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 Coal industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Huolinhe Coal A is facing in Coal sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Huolinhe Coal A
– 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 Huolinhe Coal A.
Regulatory challenges
– Huolinhe Coal A 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 Coal industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– Huolinhe Coal A 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. Huolinhe Coal A can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Coal 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 Huolinhe Coal A.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Huolinhe Coal A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Huolinhe Coal A 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 Huolinhe Coal A 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 Huolinhe Coal A 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 Huolinhe Coal A 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 Huolinhe Coal A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
