SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for CECEP Wind-Power (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , CECEP Wind-Power is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing energy prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that CECEP Wind-Power can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the CECEP Wind-Power, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which CECEP Wind-Power 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 CECEP Wind-Power can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of CECEP Wind-Power
2. Improving business portfolio management of CECEP Wind-Power
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Electric Utilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of CECEP Wind-Power
Strengths of CECEP Wind-Power | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of CECEP Wind-Power are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Electric Utilities industry
– CECEP Wind-Power has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled CECEP Wind-Power to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Electric Utilities industry. The sustainable margins have also helped CECEP Wind-Power to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of CECEP Wind-Power in Electric Utilities industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Electric Utilities
– CECEP Wind-Power is one of the leading players in the Electric Utilities industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Electric Utilities industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled CECEP Wind-Power in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of CECEP Wind-Power
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing CECEP Wind-Power does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- CECEP Wind-Power 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 CECEP Wind-Power is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at CECEP Wind-Power emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Electric Utilities industry
– CECEP Wind-Power is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Diverse revenue streams
– CECEP Wind-Power is present in almost all the verticals within the Electric Utilities industry. This has provided CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Digital Transformation in Electric Utilities industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For CECEP Wind-Power digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. CECEP Wind-Power 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 switching costs
– The high switching costs that CECEP Wind-Power 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.
High brand equity
– CECEP Wind-Power has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled CECEP Wind-Power to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– CECEP Wind-Power has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Electric Utilities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of CECEP Wind-Power have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of CECEP Wind-Power | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of CECEP Wind-Power are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though CECEP Wind-Power has some of the most successful models in the Electric Utilities industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. CECEP Wind-Power should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, CECEP Wind-Power is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help CECEP Wind-Power to provide better information regarding Electric Utilities products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Electric Utilities industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, CECEP Wind-Power 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 Electric Utilities industry.
Employees’ less understanding of CECEP Wind-Power strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, CECEP Wind-Power 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 Electric Utilities industry using digital technology.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that CECEP Wind-Power needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Electric Utilities industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at CECEP Wind-Power can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as CECEP Wind-Power is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of CECEP Wind-Power is just above the Electric Utilities 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Electric Utilities industry, CECEP Wind-Power 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, CECEP Wind-Power has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Electric Utilities industry over the last five years. CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of CECEP Wind-Power products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, CECEP Wind-Power needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
CECEP Wind-Power has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Electric Utilities industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
CECEP Wind-Power Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of CECEP Wind-Power are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Loyalty marketing
– CECEP Wind-Power 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 Electric Utilities industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. CECEP Wind-Power can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Buying journey improvements
– CECEP Wind-Power can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Electric Utilities 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, CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Electric Utilities industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for CECEP Wind-Power in the Electric Utilities industry. Now CECEP Wind-Power can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. CECEP Wind-Power can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Electric Utilities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. CECEP Wind-Power 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. CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of CECEP Wind-Power has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Electric Utilities industry. This can help CECEP Wind-Power to build a more holistic ecosystem for CECEP Wind-Power products in the Electric Utilities 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 CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, CECEP Wind-Power 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 CECEP Wind-Power to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, CECEP Wind-Power can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that CECEP Wind-Power operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Electric Utilities sector.
Manufacturing automation
– CECEP Wind-Power can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Electric Utilities 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.
Threats CECEP Wind-Power External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of CECEP Wind-Power are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Electric Utilities industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. CECEP Wind-Power can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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
– CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Environmental challenges
– CECEP Wind-Power 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. CECEP Wind-Power can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Electric Utilities industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for CECEP Wind-Power in Electric Utilities industry. The Electric Utilities 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that CECEP Wind-Power is facing in Electric Utilities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 CECEP Wind-Power business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, 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 CECEP Wind-Power in the Electric Utilities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. CECEP Wind-Power needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Electric Utilities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– CECEP Wind-Power has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Electric Utilities industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, CECEP Wind-Power needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Electric Utilities 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.
Regulatory challenges
– CECEP Wind-Power 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 Electric Utilities industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, CECEP Wind-Power 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 CECEP Wind-Power prominent markets.
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. CECEP Wind-Power 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of CECEP Wind-Power Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at CECEP Wind-Power 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 CECEP Wind-Power 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 CECEP Wind-Power 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 CECEP Wind-Power 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 CECEP Wind-Power needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
