Shanghai Jielong Industry (600836) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Printing Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Shanghai Jielong Industry (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Shanghai Jielong Industry is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Shanghai Jielong Industry
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Shanghai Jielong Industry can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Shanghai Jielong Industry, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Jielong Industry can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Shanghai Jielong Industry
2. Improving business portfolio management of Shanghai Jielong Industry
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Printing Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Shanghai Jielong Industry
Strengths of Shanghai Jielong Industry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Shanghai Jielong Industry are -
High brand equity
– Shanghai Jielong Industry has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Shanghai Jielong Industry to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Printing Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Shanghai Jielong Industry digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Shanghai Jielong Industry 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Shanghai Jielong Industry 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.
Ability to lead change in Printing Services
– Shanghai Jielong Industry is one of the leading players in the Printing Services industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Printing Services industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Shanghai Jielong Industry in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Shanghai Jielong Industry in Printing Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Shanghai Jielong Industry
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Shanghai Jielong Industry does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Shanghai Jielong Industry is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Shanghai Jielong Industry emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Shanghai Jielong Industry 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Printing Services industry
– Shanghai Jielong Industry is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Shanghai Jielong Industry comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Printing 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Shanghai Jielong Industry has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Printing Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Shanghai Jielong Industry have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Shanghai Jielong Industry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Shanghai Jielong Industry are -
Employees’ less understanding of Shanghai Jielong Industry strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Shanghai Jielong Industry 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Shanghai Jielong Industry is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Printing Services industry, but Shanghai Jielong Industry needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Shanghai Jielong Industry to focus more on services in the Printing Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Shanghai Jielong Industry has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Printing Services industry over the last five years. Shanghai Jielong Industry 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Shanghai Jielong Industry products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Shanghai Jielong Industry needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Shanghai Jielong Industry has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Printing 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Shanghai Jielong Industry, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Printing Services 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 Shanghai Jielong Industry needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Printing Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Shanghai Jielong Industry can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Shanghai Jielong Industry is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Shanghai Jielong Industry is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Shanghai Jielong Industry to provide better information regarding Printing Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Printing Services industry, Shanghai Jielong Industry 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Shanghai Jielong Industry needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Shanghai Jielong Industry is just above the Printing Services 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.
Shanghai Jielong Industry Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Shanghai Jielong Industry are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Printing Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Shanghai Jielong Industry can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Shanghai Jielong Industry 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Shanghai Jielong Industry to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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 Jielong Industry can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Shanghai Jielong Industry operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Printing Services sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Shanghai Jielong Industry can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Shanghai Jielong Industry is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Shanghai Jielong Industry can utilize new technology in the field of Printing Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Shanghai Jielong Industry can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Printing Services 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. Shanghai Jielong Industry can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Jielong Industry to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Shanghai Jielong Industry in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Printing Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Printing Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Shanghai Jielong Industry in the Printing Services industry. Now Shanghai Jielong Industry can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Printing Services industry.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Shanghai Jielong Industry has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Printing Services industry. This can help Shanghai Jielong Industry to build a more holistic ecosystem for Shanghai Jielong Industry products in the Printing Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Shanghai Jielong Industry External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Shanghai Jielong Industry are -
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.
Environmental challenges
– Shanghai Jielong Industry 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. Shanghai Jielong Industry can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Printing Services 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Printing Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Shanghai Jielong Industry can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Jielong Industry prominent markets.
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 Jielong Industry in the Printing Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Shanghai Jielong Industry needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Printing Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Printing Services industry regulations.
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 Jielong Industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Printing Services industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of Shanghai Jielong Industry
– 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 Jielong Industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Shanghai Jielong Industry may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Printing Services sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Printing Services industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Shanghai Jielong Industry Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Shanghai Jielong Industry 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 Jielong Industry 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 Jielong Industry 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 Jielong Industry 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 Jielong Industry needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
