SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Nantong Jiangshan (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Nantong Jiangshan is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, technology disruption, wage bills are increasing,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Nantong Jiangshan
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Nantong Jiangshan can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Nantong Jiangshan, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Nantong Jiangshan 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 Nantong Jiangshan can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Nantong Jiangshan
2. Improving business portfolio management of Nantong Jiangshan
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Chemical Manufacturing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Nantong Jiangshan
Strengths of Nantong Jiangshan | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Nantong Jiangshan are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Nantong Jiangshan is one of the leading players in the Chemical Manufacturing 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.
Digital Transformation in Chemical Manufacturing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Nantong Jiangshan digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Nantong Jiangshan 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Chemical Manufacturing industry
– Nantong Jiangshan is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Nantong Jiangshan has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Nantong Jiangshan 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.
Ability to lead change in Chemical Manufacturing
– Nantong Jiangshan is one of the leading players in the Chemical Manufacturing industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Chemical Manufacturing industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Nantong Jiangshan in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– Nantong Jiangshan has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Nantong Jiangshan to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Nantong Jiangshan
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Nantong Jiangshan 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 Nantong Jiangshan in Chemical Manufacturing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Nantong Jiangshan is one of the most innovative firm in Chemical Manufacturing sector.
Learning organization
- Nantong Jiangshan 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 Nantong Jiangshan is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Nantong Jiangshan emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Nantong Jiangshan has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Chemical Manufacturing industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Nantong Jiangshan have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Nantong Jiangshan in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Nantong Jiangshan has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Nantong Jiangshan to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Nantong Jiangshan | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Nantong Jiangshan are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Nantong Jiangshan has high operating costs in the Chemical Manufacturing industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Nantong Jiangshan lucrative customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Nantong Jiangshan needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Nantong Jiangshan has some of the most successful models in the Chemical Manufacturing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Nantong Jiangshan should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Chemical Manufacturing industry, Nantong Jiangshan 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Nantong Jiangshan 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 Chemical Manufacturing industry using digital technology.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Nantong Jiangshan is just above the Chemical Manufacturing 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Nantong Jiangshan, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Chemical Manufacturing 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Nantong Jiangshan needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Chemical Manufacturing industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Nantong Jiangshan can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Nantong Jiangshan is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Nantong Jiangshan is one of the leading players in the Chemical Manufacturing industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Chemical Manufacturing industry in last five years.
Need for greater diversity
– Nantong Jiangshan 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Nantong Jiangshan 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.
Nantong Jiangshan Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Nantong Jiangshan are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Nantong Jiangshan has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Chemical Manufacturing sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Nantong Jiangshan to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Nantong Jiangshan to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Nantong Jiangshan 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.
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 Nantong Jiangshan 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Nantong Jiangshan has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Chemical Manufacturing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Nantong Jiangshan can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Nantong Jiangshan can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Nantong Jiangshan operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Chemical Manufacturing sector.
Developing new processes and practices
– Nantong Jiangshan can develop new processes and procedures in Chemical Manufacturing industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Chemical Manufacturing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Nantong Jiangshan 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. Nantong Jiangshan 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Nantong Jiangshan 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Nantong Jiangshan in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Chemical Manufacturing industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Nantong Jiangshan is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Nantong Jiangshan can utilize new technology in the field of Chemical Manufacturing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Nantong Jiangshan has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Chemical Manufacturing industry. This can help Nantong Jiangshan to build a more holistic ecosystem for Nantong Jiangshan products in the Chemical Manufacturing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Nantong Jiangshan 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 Nantong Jiangshan to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Nantong Jiangshan External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Nantong Jiangshan are -
Regulatory challenges
– Nantong Jiangshan 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 Chemical Manufacturing industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Nantong Jiangshan may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Chemical Manufacturing sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Nantong Jiangshan has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Chemical Manufacturing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Nantong Jiangshan needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Chemical Manufacturing 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.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Nantong Jiangshan 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 Chemical Manufacturing industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of Nantong Jiangshan
– 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 Nantong Jiangshan.
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. Nantong Jiangshan needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Chemical Manufacturing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Nantong Jiangshan 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 Chemical Manufacturing 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 Nantong Jiangshan.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Chemical Manufacturing industry are lowering. It can presents Nantong Jiangshan with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Chemical Manufacturing sector.
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 Nantong Jiangshan in the Chemical Manufacturing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Nantong Jiangshan 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 Nantong Jiangshan prominent markets.
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 Nantong Jiangshan business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Nantong Jiangshan Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Nantong Jiangshan 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 Nantong Jiangshan 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 Nantong Jiangshan 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 Nantong Jiangshan 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 Nantong Jiangshan needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.