Shanghai Greencourt Invest A (600695) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Food Processing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Shanghai Greencourt Invest A (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Shanghai Greencourt Invest A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Shanghai Greencourt Invest A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Shanghai Greencourt Invest A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Shanghai Greencourt Invest A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A
Strengths of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A are -
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Shanghai Greencourt Invest A to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A is one of the leading players in the Food Processing 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Training and development
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A has one of the best training and development program in Consumer/Non-Cyclical 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Food Processing industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Ability to lead change in Food Processing
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Food Processing industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Shanghai Greencourt Invest A in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Shanghai Greencourt Invest A has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Shanghai Greencourt Invest A to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Shanghai Greencourt Invest A digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Weaknesses of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Shanghai Greencourt Invest A needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Shanghai Greencourt Invest A to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Food Processing industry using digital technology.
Lack of clear differentiation of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Shanghai Greencourt Invest A needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Food Processing industry over the last five years. Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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, Shanghai Greencourt Invest A has high operating costs in the Food Processing industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Shanghai Greencourt Invest A lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Shanghai Greencourt Invest A, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Shanghai Greencourt Invest A has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Food Processing industry.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Shanghai Greencourt Invest A needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Shanghai Greencourt Invest A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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. Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Food Processing industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
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 Greencourt Invest 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Food Processing industry.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Food Processing industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Shanghai Greencourt Invest A in the Food Processing industry. Now Shanghai Greencourt Invest A can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Greencourt Invest A can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Shanghai Greencourt Invest A operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Food Processing 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Shanghai Greencourt Invest A is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Shanghai Greencourt Invest A can utilize new technology in the field of Food Processing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
Threats Shanghai Greencourt Invest A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Food Processing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Shanghai Greencourt Invest A can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Shanghai Greencourt Invest A in Food Processing industry. The Food Processing 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.
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 Shanghai Greencourt Invest A in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Shanghai Greencourt Invest A prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A
– 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 Greencourt Invest A.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest A has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Shanghai Greencourt Invest A needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Food Processing 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.
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 Greencourt Invest A business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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.
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 Greencourt Invest A.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Food Processing industry.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Shanghai Greencourt Invest A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Shanghai Greencourt Invest 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 Shanghai Greencourt Invest A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.