SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Zhuhai Enpower (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Zhuhai Enpower is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is backlash against globalization, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Zhuhai Enpower can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Zhuhai Enpower, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Zhuhai Enpower 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 Zhuhai Enpower can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Zhuhai Enpower
2. Improving business portfolio management of Zhuhai Enpower
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Auto & Truck Parts sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Zhuhai Enpower
Strengths of Zhuhai Enpower | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Zhuhai Enpower are -
Ability to lead change in Auto & Truck Parts
– Zhuhai Enpower is one of the leading players in the Auto & Truck Parts industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Auto & Truck Parts industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Zhuhai Enpower in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Digital Transformation in Auto & Truck Parts industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Zhuhai Enpower digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Zhuhai Enpower 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.
Learning organization
- Zhuhai Enpower 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 Zhuhai Enpower is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Zhuhai Enpower emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Zhuhai Enpower is present in almost all the verticals within the Auto & Truck Parts industry. This has provided Zhuhai Enpower 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Zhuhai Enpower in Auto & Truck Parts industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Zhuhai Enpower has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Auto & Truck Parts industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Zhuhai Enpower have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Zhuhai Enpower has one of the best training and development program in Consumer 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.
Organizational Resilience of Zhuhai Enpower
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Zhuhai Enpower does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Zhuhai Enpower in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Zhuhai Enpower has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Zhuhai Enpower to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management in the Auto & Truck Parts industry
– Zhuhai Enpower is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Zhuhai Enpower has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Zhuhai Enpower staying ahead in the Auto & Truck Parts industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Analytics focus
– Zhuhai Enpower 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 Auto & Truck Parts 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 Zhuhai Enpower | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Zhuhai Enpower are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Zhuhai Enpower has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Auto & Truck Parts industry over the last five years. Zhuhai Enpower 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Zhuhai Enpower needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Auto & Truck Parts industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Zhuhai Enpower 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Zhuhai Enpower is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Auto & Truck Parts industry, but Zhuhai Enpower needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Zhuhai Enpower to focus more on services in the Auto & Truck Parts industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Zhuhai Enpower 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Zhuhai Enpower 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry using digital technology.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Zhuhai Enpower has high operating costs in the Auto & Truck Parts industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Zhuhai Enpower lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Zhuhai Enpower needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Auto & Truck Parts industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Zhuhai Enpower can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Zhuhai Enpower 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, Zhuhai Enpower is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Zhuhai Enpower to provide better information regarding Auto & Truck Parts 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry, Zhuhai Enpower 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Zhuhai Enpower products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Zhuhai Enpower needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Zhuhai Enpower Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Zhuhai Enpower are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Zhuhai Enpower 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Zhuhai Enpower has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Auto & Truck Parts sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Zhuhai Enpower to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Zhuhai Enpower to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Auto & Truck Parts industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Zhuhai Enpower in the Auto & Truck Parts industry. Now Zhuhai Enpower can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Zhuhai Enpower 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.
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 Zhuhai Enpower 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Zhuhai Enpower in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Auto & Truck Parts industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Zhuhai Enpower is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Zhuhai Enpower can utilize new technology in the field of Auto & Truck Parts industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Zhuhai Enpower can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Auto & Truck Parts 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Zhuhai Enpower 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 Zhuhai Enpower to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Zhuhai Enpower to increase its market reach. Zhuhai Enpower 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Zhuhai Enpower can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Auto & Truck Parts 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Zhuhai Enpower has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Auto & Truck Parts industry. This can help Zhuhai Enpower to build a more holistic ecosystem for Zhuhai Enpower products in the Auto & Truck Parts industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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. Zhuhai Enpower can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Zhuhai Enpower External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Zhuhai Enpower are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Zhuhai Enpower is facing in Auto & Truck Parts sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
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. Zhuhai Enpower 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.
Increasing wage structure of Zhuhai Enpower
– 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 Zhuhai Enpower.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Zhuhai Enpower may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Auto & Truck Parts sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Zhuhai Enpower 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 Zhuhai Enpower prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Zhuhai Enpower 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Zhuhai Enpower 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 Zhuhai Enpower business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Zhuhai Enpower 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 Auto & Truck Parts industry and other sectors.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Auto & Truck Parts industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Zhuhai Enpower can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Zhuhai Enpower needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Auto & Truck Parts industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Zhuhai Enpower Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Zhuhai Enpower 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 Zhuhai Enpower 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 Zhuhai Enpower 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 Zhuhai Enpower 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 Zhuhai Enpower needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
