SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Hubei Yingtong Telecom (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Hubei Yingtong Telecom is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is backlash against globalization, geopolitical disruptions, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing energy prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Hubei Yingtong Telecom
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Hubei Yingtong Telecom can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hubei Yingtong Telecom, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Hubei Yingtong Telecom
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hubei Yingtong Telecom
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Audio & Video Equipment sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Hubei Yingtong Telecom
Strengths of Hubei Yingtong Telecom | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hubei Yingtong Telecom are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 recruit top talent
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom is one of the leading players in the Audio & Video Equipment 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.
Training and development
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
Analytics focus
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Audio & Video Equipment 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.
Learning organization
- Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Hubei Yingtong Telecom emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Hubei Yingtong Telecom in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Hubei Yingtong Telecom has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Hubei Yingtong Telecom to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Hubei Yingtong Telecom
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Hubei Yingtong Telecom does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in Audio & Video Equipment industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Hubei Yingtong Telecom digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
Ability to lead change in Audio & Video Equipment
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom is one of the leading players in the Audio & Video Equipment industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Audio & Video Equipment industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Hubei Yingtong Telecom in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Hubei Yingtong Telecom staying ahead in the Audio & Video Equipment industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Hubei Yingtong Telecom | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Hubei Yingtong Telecom are -
Skills based hiring in Audio & Video Equipment industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Hubei Yingtong Telecom has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Hubei Yingtong Telecom is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Audio & Video Equipment industry, but Hubei Yingtong Telecom needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Hubei Yingtong Telecom to focus more on services in the Audio & Video Equipment industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Hubei Yingtong Telecom products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Hubei Yingtong Telecom needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Hubei Yingtong Telecom has high operating costs in the Audio & Video Equipment industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Hubei Yingtong Telecom lucrative customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Hubei Yingtong Telecom has some of the most successful models in the Audio & Video Equipment industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Hubei Yingtong Telecom should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Hubei Yingtong Telecom needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Audio & Video Equipment industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Hubei Yingtong Telecom can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Hubei Yingtong Telecom is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Audio & Video Equipment industry, Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
High dependence on Hubei Yingtong Telecom ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Hubei Yingtong Telecom still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Audio & Video Equipment industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Hubei Yingtong Telecom has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Hubei Yingtong Telecom, in the dynamic environment of Audio & Video Equipment industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Hubei Yingtong Telecom has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Employees’ less understanding of Hubei Yingtong Telecom strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Audio & Video Equipment 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.
Hubei Yingtong Telecom Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Hubei Yingtong Telecom are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Audio & Video Equipment industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Hubei Yingtong Telecom in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Audio & Video Equipment industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Audio & Video Equipment 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Hubei Yingtong Telecom can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Audio & Video Equipment industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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. Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Audio & Video Equipment sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Hubei Yingtong Telecom to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Audio & Video Equipment industry. This can help Hubei Yingtong Telecom to build a more holistic ecosystem for Hubei Yingtong Telecom products in the Audio & Video Equipment industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
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. Hubei Yingtong Telecom can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
Threats Hubei Yingtong Telecom External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Hubei Yingtong Telecom are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Audio & Video Equipment industry and other sectors.
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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom in the Audio & Video Equipment sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Hubei Yingtong Telecom
– 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Audio & Video Equipment industry regulations.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Audio & Video Equipment industry.
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. Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom prominent markets.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Hubei Yingtong Telecom in Audio & Video Equipment industry. The Audio & Video Equipment 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.
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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Hubei Yingtong Telecom may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Audio & Video Equipment sector.
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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Hubei Yingtong Telecom Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom 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 Hubei Yingtong Telecom needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
