Comfort Sci Tech A (2614) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Appliance & Tool
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Comfort Sci Tech A (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Comfort Sci Tech A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, technology disruption, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Comfort Sci Tech A
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Comfort Sci Tech A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Comfort Sci Tech A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Comfort Sci Tech 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 Comfort Sci Tech A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Comfort Sci Tech A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Comfort Sci Tech A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Appliance & Tool sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Comfort Sci Tech A
Strengths of Comfort Sci Tech A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Comfort Sci Tech A are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Appliance & Tool industry
– Comfort Sci Tech A has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Comfort Sci Tech A to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Appliance & Tool industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Comfort Sci Tech A to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Training and development
– Comfort Sci Tech A has one of the best training and development program in Consumer Cyclical 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.
Learning organization
- Comfort Sci Tech 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 Comfort Sci Tech A is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Comfort Sci Tech A emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Comfort Sci Tech A
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Comfort Sci Tech A does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Comfort Sci Tech A in Appliance & Tool industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Comfort Sci Tech A 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 Appliance & Tool industry. The technology infrastructure of China 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Comfort Sci Tech A has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Comfort Sci Tech A 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Comfort Sci Tech A has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Comfort Sci Tech A staying ahead in the Appliance & Tool industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Comfort Sci Tech A has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Appliance & Tool industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Comfort Sci Tech A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Comfort Sci Tech 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
– Comfort Sci Tech A is present in almost all the verticals within the Appliance & Tool industry. This has provided Comfort Sci Tech 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Comfort Sci Tech A is one of the most innovative firm in Appliance & Tool sector.
Weaknesses of Comfort Sci Tech A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Comfort Sci Tech A are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Comfort Sci Tech A has some of the most successful models in the Appliance & Tool industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Comfort Sci Tech A should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Comfort Sci Tech A needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Appliance & Tool industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Comfort Sci Tech A can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Comfort Sci Tech A is planning to shift buying processes online.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Comfort Sci Tech A, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Appliance & Tool 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.
High dependence on Comfort Sci Tech A ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Comfort Sci Tech A still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Appliance & Tool industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Comfort Sci Tech A has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Comfort Sci Tech A, in the dynamic environment of Appliance & Tool industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Comfort Sci Tech A has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Comfort Sci Tech 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.
Skills based hiring in Appliance & Tool industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Comfort Sci Tech A 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Comfort Sci Tech A products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Comfort Sci Tech A needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Comfort Sci Tech A is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Appliance & Tool industry, but Comfort Sci Tech A needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Comfort Sci Tech A to focus more on services in the Appliance & Tool industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Comfort Sci Tech 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 Appliance & Tool industry using digital technology.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Comfort Sci Tech A has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Appliance & Tool industry over the last five years. Comfort Sci Tech A 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.
Comfort Sci Tech A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Comfort Sci Tech A are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Comfort Sci Tech 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Comfort Sci Tech 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 Appliance & Tool industry.
Buying journey improvements
– Comfort Sci Tech A can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Appliance & Tool 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Comfort Sci Tech 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Comfort Sci Tech A has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Appliance & Tool industry. This can help Comfort Sci Tech A to build a more holistic ecosystem for Comfort Sci Tech A products in the Appliance & Tool industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Appliance & Tool industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Comfort Sci Tech 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. Comfort Sci Tech 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Comfort Sci Tech A can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Comfort Sci Tech A operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Appliance & Tool sector.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Appliance & Tool industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Comfort Sci Tech A can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 Comfort Sci Tech 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Comfort Sci Tech 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Comfort Sci Tech A has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Appliance & Tool sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Comfort Sci Tech A to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Comfort Sci Tech A to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Comfort Sci Tech A can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Appliance & Tool 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Comfort Sci Tech A can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Comfort Sci Tech A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Comfort Sci Tech A are -
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Comfort Sci Tech A 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 Appliance & Tool industry and other sectors.
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 Comfort Sci Tech A business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Appliance & Tool industry are lowering. It can presents Comfort Sci Tech A with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Appliance & Tool sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Comfort Sci Tech 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.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Comfort Sci Tech 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 Appliance & Tool industry regulations.
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. Comfort Sci Tech A needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Appliance & Tool industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Comfort Sci Tech 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 Appliance & Tool industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Comfort Sci Tech A in Appliance & Tool industry. The Appliance & Tool 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.
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. Comfort Sci Tech A 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Comfort Sci Tech A 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 Comfort Sci Tech A prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of Comfort Sci Tech 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 Comfort Sci Tech A.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Comfort Sci Tech A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Comfort Sci Tech 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 Comfort Sci Tech 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 Comfort Sci Tech 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 Comfort Sci Tech 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 Comfort Sci Tech A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.