Grandland Group A (2482) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Business Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Grandland Group A (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Grandland Group A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Grandland Group A
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Grandland Group A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Grandland Group A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Grandland Group 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 Grandland Group A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Grandland Group A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Grandland Group A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Business Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Grandland Group A
Strengths of Grandland Group A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Grandland Group A are -
Training and development
– Grandland Group A has one of the best training and development program in Services 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Grandland Group A is one of the leading players in the Business Services industry in China. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in China. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Business Services industry
– Grandland Group A has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Grandland Group A to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Business Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Grandland Group A to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Business Services industry
– Grandland Group A is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to lead change in Business Services
– Grandland Group A is one of the leading players in the Business Services industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Business Services industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Grandland Group A in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Grandland Group A in Business Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Grandland Group 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 Business Services 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.
High brand equity
– Grandland Group A has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Grandland Group A to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Grandland Group A has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Grandland Group 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Grandland Group A 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Grandland Group A is present in almost all the verticals within the Business Services industry. This has provided Grandland Group 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.
Learning organization
- Grandland Group 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 Grandland Group A is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Grandland Group A emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Grandland Group A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Grandland Group A are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Grandland Group A has high operating costs in the Business Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Grandland Group A lucrative customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Grandland Group A is just above the Business Services industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Employees’ less understanding of Grandland Group A strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Grandland Group A 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Grandland Group A, in the dynamic environment of Business Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Grandland Group A has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Grandland Group A has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Business Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Grandland Group A needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Business Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Grandland Group A can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Grandland Group A is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Business Services industry, Grandland Group A 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.
High dependence on Grandland Group A ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Grandland Group A still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Business Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Grandland Group A has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Grandland Group A 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Grandland Group 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Grandland Group A has some of the most successful models in the Business Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Grandland Group A should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Grandland Group A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Grandland Group A are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Grandland Group 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Grandland Group A has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Business Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Grandland Group A to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Grandland Group A to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Grandland Group A can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Grandland Group A has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Business Services industry. This can help Grandland Group A to build a more holistic ecosystem for Grandland Group A products in the Business Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Grandland Group 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Grandland Group A can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Business 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 Business Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Grandland Group 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. Grandland Group 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Grandland Group 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 Business Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Grandland Group A is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Grandland Group A can utilize new technology in the field of Business Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Grandland Group A can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Grandland Group A operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Business Services sector.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Grandland Group 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 Business Services industry.
Manufacturing automation
– Grandland Group A can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Business 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.
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 Grandland Group 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.
Threats Grandland Group A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Grandland Group A are -
Regulatory challenges
– Grandland Group 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 Business Services industry regulations.
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.
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 Grandland Group A.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Business Services industry are lowering. It can presents Grandland Group A with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Business Services sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Grandland Group 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 Business Services sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Grandland Group 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 Grandland Group A prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Grandland Group 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 Business Services industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Grandland Group A is facing in Business Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Grandland Group 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 Business Services industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of Grandland Group 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 Grandland Group A.
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 Grandland Group A business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Grandland Group 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Grandland Group A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Grandland Group 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 Grandland Group 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 Grandland Group 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 Grandland Group 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 Grandland Group A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.