SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Beijing Cuiwei Tower (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Beijing Cuiwei Tower is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing commodity prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Beijing Cuiwei Tower
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Beijing Cuiwei Tower can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Beijing Cuiwei Tower, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Beijing Cuiwei Tower
2. Improving business portfolio management of Beijing Cuiwei Tower
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Retail (Department & Discount) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Beijing Cuiwei Tower
Strengths of Beijing Cuiwei Tower | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Beijing Cuiwei Tower are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower is present in almost all the verticals within the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This has provided Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Beijing Cuiwei Tower in Retail (Department & Discount) industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Beijing Cuiwei Tower comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Beijing Cuiwei Tower staying ahead in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Learning organization
- Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Beijing Cuiwei Tower emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Retail (Department & Discount)
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower is one of the leading players in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Beijing Cuiwei Tower in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Beijing Cuiwei Tower
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Beijing Cuiwei Tower does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Weaknesses of Beijing Cuiwei Tower | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Beijing Cuiwei Tower are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Beijing Cuiwei Tower has high operating costs in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Beijing Cuiwei Tower lucrative customers.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Beijing Cuiwei Tower products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Beijing Cuiwei Tower needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Beijing Cuiwei Tower is just above the Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Beijing Cuiwei Tower is one of the leading players in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring in Retail (Department & Discount) industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Beijing Cuiwei Tower strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Beijing Cuiwei Tower has some of the most successful models in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Beijing Cuiwei Tower should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on Beijing Cuiwei Tower ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Beijing Cuiwei Tower still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Retail (Department & Discount) industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Beijing Cuiwei Tower has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry, Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Beijing Cuiwei Tower Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Beijing Cuiwei Tower are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Beijing Cuiwei Tower to increase its market reach. Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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. Beijing Cuiwei Tower can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Beijing Cuiwei Tower in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Beijing Cuiwei Tower can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Retail (Department & Discount) industry. This can help Beijing Cuiwei Tower to build a more holistic ecosystem for Beijing Cuiwei Tower products in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Retail (Department & Discount) 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 Retail (Department & Discount) industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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. Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower can develop new processes and procedures in Retail (Department & Discount) 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.
Threats Beijing Cuiwei Tower External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Beijing Cuiwei Tower are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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.
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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Retail (Department & Discount) industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower prominent markets.
Environmental challenges
– Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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. Beijing Cuiwei Tower can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Retail (Department & Discount) industry.
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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower in the Retail (Department & Discount) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Retail (Department & Discount) industry are lowering. It can presents Beijing Cuiwei Tower with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Retail (Department & Discount) sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Beijing Cuiwei Tower may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Retail (Department & Discount) sector.
Increasing wage structure of Beijing Cuiwei Tower
– 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Beijing Cuiwei Tower is facing in Retail (Department & Discount) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Beijing Cuiwei Tower Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower 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 Beijing Cuiwei Tower needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.