Shanghai Highly B (900910) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Capital Goods
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Shanghai Highly B (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Shanghai Highly B is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is backlash against globalization, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Shanghai Highly B
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Shanghai Highly B can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Shanghai Highly B, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Shanghai Highly B 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 Shanghai Highly B can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Shanghai Highly B
2. Improving business portfolio management of Shanghai Highly B
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Misc. Capital Goods sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Shanghai Highly B
Strengths of Shanghai Highly B | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Shanghai Highly B are -
Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Capital Goods industry
– Shanghai Highly B is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Capital Goods industry
– Shanghai Highly B has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Shanghai Highly B to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Shanghai Highly B to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Shanghai Highly B 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 Shanghai Highly B is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Shanghai Highly B emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Shanghai Highly B has one of the best training and development program in Capital Goods 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Shanghai Highly B is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Capital Goods industry. This has provided Shanghai Highly B 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 Shanghai Highly B in Misc. Capital Goods industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Shanghai Highly B in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Shanghai Highly B has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Shanghai Highly B to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Shanghai Highly B 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Shanghai Highly B has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Misc. Capital Goods industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Shanghai Highly B have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Shanghai Highly B 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 Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Shanghai Highly B is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Capital Goods sector.
High brand equity
– Shanghai Highly B has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Shanghai Highly B to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses of Shanghai Highly B | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Shanghai Highly B are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Shanghai Highly B has high operating costs in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Shanghai Highly B lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Shanghai Highly B needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Misc. Capital Goods industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Shanghai Highly B can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Shanghai Highly B is planning to shift buying processes online.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Shanghai Highly B has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Shanghai Highly B is just above the Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Shanghai Highly B has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Shanghai Highly B should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Shanghai Highly B 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry using digital technology.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Shanghai Highly B, in the dynamic environment of Misc. Capital Goods industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Shanghai Highly B has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Employees’ less understanding of Shanghai Highly B strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Shanghai Highly B 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, Shanghai Highly B 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Shanghai Highly B, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Shanghai Highly B is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Shanghai Highly B to provide better information regarding Misc. Capital Goods products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Shanghai Highly B Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Shanghai Highly B are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Shanghai Highly B is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Shanghai Highly B can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Capital Goods industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Misc. Capital Goods industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Shanghai Highly B 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. Shanghai Highly B 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Shanghai Highly B 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Shanghai Highly B 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
– Shanghai Highly B has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Misc. Capital Goods sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Shanghai Highly B to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Shanghai Highly B to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Shanghai Highly B to increase its market reach. Shanghai Highly B will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
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. Shanghai Highly B can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Shanghai Highly B can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Shanghai Highly B operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Misc. Capital Goods sector.
Manufacturing automation
– Shanghai Highly B can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Shanghai Highly B 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Misc. Capital Goods industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Shanghai Highly B can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Misc. Capital Goods industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Shanghai Highly B in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. Now Shanghai Highly B 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 Shanghai Highly B 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 Shanghai Highly B External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Shanghai Highly B are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Capital Goods industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Shanghai Highly B can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Shanghai Highly B
– 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 Shanghai Highly B.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Shanghai Highly B 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Shanghai Highly B 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry regulations.
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 Shanghai Highly B business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Shanghai Highly B in Misc. Capital Goods industry. The Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Capital Goods industry are lowering. It can presents Shanghai Highly B with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Misc. Capital Goods sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Shanghai Highly B has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Shanghai Highly B needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Misc. Capital Goods 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.
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 Shanghai Highly B.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Shanghai Highly B 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Shanghai Highly B 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. Shanghai Highly B can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Capital Goods industry.
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. Shanghai Highly B needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Capital Goods industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Shanghai Highly B is facing in Misc. Capital Goods sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Shanghai Highly B Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Shanghai Highly B 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 Shanghai Highly B 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 Shanghai Highly B 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 Shanghai Highly B 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 Shanghai Highly B needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.