Zhezhong Cons A (2346) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Construction - Raw Materials
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Zhezhong Cons A (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Zhezhong Cons A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Zhezhong Cons A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Zhezhong Cons A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Zhezhong Cons 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 Zhezhong Cons A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Zhezhong Cons A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Zhezhong Cons A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Construction - Raw Materials sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Zhezhong Cons A
Strengths of Zhezhong Cons A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Zhezhong Cons A are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Zhezhong Cons A is one of the leading players in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Zhezhong Cons A in Construction - Raw Materials industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– Zhezhong Cons A has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Zhezhong Cons A to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Zhezhong Cons A to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Zhezhong Cons A is one of the most innovative firm in Construction - Raw Materials sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Zhezhong Cons A has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Zhezhong Cons A staying ahead in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Zhezhong Cons A has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Zhezhong Cons A to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Zhezhong Cons A 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Zhezhong Cons 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.
Learning organization
- Zhezhong Cons 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 Zhezhong Cons A is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Zhezhong Cons A emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Zhezhong Cons A in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Zhezhong Cons A has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Zhezhong Cons A to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Zhezhong Cons A
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Zhezhong Cons A does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Zhezhong Cons A has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Construction - Raw Materials industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Zhezhong Cons A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Zhezhong Cons A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Zhezhong Cons A are -
Skills based hiring in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Zhezhong Cons 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Zhezhong Cons A is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, but Zhezhong Cons A needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Zhezhong Cons A to focus more on services in the Construction - Raw Materials industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Zhezhong Cons A has some of the most successful models in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Zhezhong Cons A should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Zhezhong Cons 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry using digital technology.
High dependence on Zhezhong Cons A ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Zhezhong Cons A still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Construction - Raw Materials industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Zhezhong Cons A has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Zhezhong Cons 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Zhezhong Cons A strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Zhezhong Cons 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Zhezhong Cons A has high operating costs in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Zhezhong Cons A lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Zhezhong Cons A, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Construction - Raw Materials 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 strategic competitive environment developments
– As Zhezhong Cons A is one of the leading players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in last five years.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Zhezhong Cons A needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Zhezhong Cons A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Zhezhong Cons A are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Zhezhong Cons 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Construction - Raw Materials industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Zhezhong Cons 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. Zhezhong Cons 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Zhezhong Cons 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 Zhezhong Cons A to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Zhezhong Cons A can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Zhezhong Cons 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Zhezhong Cons A has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Construction - Raw Materials industry. This can help Zhezhong Cons A to build a more holistic ecosystem for Zhezhong Cons A products in the Construction - Raw Materials industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Zhezhong Cons A to increase its market reach. Zhezhong Cons A 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Zhezhong Cons 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Zhezhong Cons A can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Zhezhong Cons A operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Construction - Raw Materials sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Zhezhong Cons 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.
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 Zhezhong Cons 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Zhezhong Cons A can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
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. Zhezhong Cons A can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Zhezhong Cons A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Zhezhong Cons A are -
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 Zhezhong Cons 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry are lowering. It can presents Zhezhong Cons A with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Construction - Raw Materials sector.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Zhezhong Cons A in Construction - Raw Materials industry. The Construction - Raw Materials 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.
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 Zhezhong Cons A.
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.
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 Zhezhong Cons A in the Construction - Raw Materials sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Zhezhong Cons 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 Zhezhong Cons A prominent markets.
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. Zhezhong Cons 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Zhezhong Cons 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 Construction - Raw Materials 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. Zhezhong Cons A needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Construction - Raw Materials industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Zhezhong Cons 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Zhezhong Cons 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. Zhezhong Cons A can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Construction - Raw Materials industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Zhezhong Cons A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Zhezhong Cons 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 Zhezhong Cons 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 Zhezhong Cons 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 Zhezhong Cons 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 Zhezhong Cons A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.