Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv (600119) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Business Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing, technology disruption, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv
2. Improving business portfolio management of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Business Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv
Strengths of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Business Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is one of the most innovative firm in Business Services sector.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
High brand equity
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv in Business Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Business 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.
Learning organization
- Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Analytics focus
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Business Services 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Business Services industry
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Business Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Weaknesses of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to provide better information regarding Business Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Business Services industry over the last five years. Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Business Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has some of the most successful models in the Business Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is just above the Business 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Business Services industry, but Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to focus more on services in the Business Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ less understanding of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Business 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is one of the leading players in the Business Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Business Services industry in last five years.
Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Business Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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. Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Business Services industry.
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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Business Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv in the Business Services industry. Now Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Business Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Business Services industry. This can help Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to build a more holistic ecosystem for Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv products in the Business Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv to increase its market reach. Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Business Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv are -
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. Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
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.
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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Business Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Business Services 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv is facing in Business Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv
– 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Business Services industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Business Services industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Business Services industry and other sectors.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Business Services sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv 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 Y.U.D. Yangtze River Inv needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.