Palm Landscape A (2431) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Personal Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Palm Landscape A (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Palm Landscape A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, technology disruption, increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
increasing energy prices, there is backlash against globalization, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Palm Landscape A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Palm Landscape A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Palm Landscape 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 Palm Landscape A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Palm Landscape A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Palm Landscape A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Personal Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Palm Landscape A
Strengths of Palm Landscape A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Palm Landscape A are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Personal Services industry
– Palm Landscape A has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Palm Landscape A to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Personal Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Palm Landscape A to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Palm Landscape 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.
High brand equity
– Palm Landscape A has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Palm Landscape A to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Palm Landscape A has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Palm Landscape 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Palm Landscape A has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Personal Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Palm Landscape A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Palm Landscape 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.
Digital Transformation in Personal Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Palm Landscape A digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Palm Landscape A has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Palm Landscape A in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Palm Landscape A has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Palm Landscape A to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Palm Landscape A is present in almost all the verticals within the Personal Services industry. This has provided Palm Landscape 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.
Ability to lead change in Personal Services
– Palm Landscape A is one of the leading players in the Personal Services industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Personal Services industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Palm Landscape A in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Palm Landscape A comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Personal Services industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Palm Landscape A in Personal Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Palm Landscape A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Palm Landscape A are -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Palm Landscape 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Palm Landscape A needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Palm Landscape 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 Personal Services industry over the last five years. Palm Landscape 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Palm Landscape 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 Personal Services industry using digital technology.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Palm Landscape A has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Personal 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.
High dependence on Palm Landscape A ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Palm Landscape A still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Personal Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Palm Landscape A has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Skills based hiring in Personal Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Palm Landscape 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Personal Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Palm Landscape A is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Personal Services industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Palm Landscape A needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Personal Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Palm Landscape A can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Palm Landscape A is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Personal Services industry, Palm Landscape 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Palm Landscape A, in the dynamic environment of Personal Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Palm Landscape A has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Palm Landscape A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Palm Landscape A are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Palm Landscape A can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Palm Landscape A to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Palm Landscape A to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Palm Landscape 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Palm Landscape 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Palm Landscape A is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Palm Landscape A can utilize new technology in the field of Personal Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, 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 Palm Landscape A to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Personal Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Palm Landscape 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. Palm Landscape 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Palm Landscape A 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 Palm Landscape A to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Palm Landscape 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 Palm Landscape A has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Personal Services industry. This can help Palm Landscape A to build a more holistic ecosystem for Palm Landscape A products in the Personal Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Personal Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Palm Landscape A in the Personal Services industry. Now Palm Landscape A can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Palm Landscape A has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Palm Landscape A to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Palm Landscape A to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Palm Landscape 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 Personal Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Palm Landscape A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Palm Landscape A are -
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 Palm Landscape A in the Personal Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Palm Landscape A has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Palm Landscape A needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal Services 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Palm Landscape 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 Personal Services industry.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Palm Landscape A.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Personal Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Palm Landscape A 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.
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 Palm Landscape A business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Palm Landscape 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Palm Landscape 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 Palm Landscape A prominent markets.
Environmental challenges
– Palm Landscape A needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Palm Landscape A can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Personal Services industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Personal Services industry are lowering. It can presents Palm Landscape A with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Personal Services sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Palm Landscape 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 Personal Services industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Palm Landscape A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Palm Landscape 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 Palm Landscape 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 Palm Landscape 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 Palm Landscape 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 Palm Landscape A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.