SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, geopolitical disruptions, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization,
technology disruption, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech
2. Improving business portfolio management of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Appliance & Tool sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech
Strengths of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is present in almost all the verticals within the Appliance & Tool industry. This has provided Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is one of the leading players in the Appliance & Tool 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.
Analytics focus
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Appliance & Tool 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is one of the most innovative firm in Appliance & Tool sector.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech in Appliance & Tool industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management in the Appliance & Tool industry
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Appliance & Tool industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Training and development
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Ability to lead change in Appliance & Tool
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is one of the leading players in the Appliance & Tool industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Appliance & Tool industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is just above the Appliance & Tool 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.
High dependence on Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Appliance & Tool industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Appliance & Tool industry, Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Appliance & Tool industry using digital technology.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech has some of the most successful models in the Appliance & Tool industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring in Appliance & Tool industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is one of the leading players in the Appliance & Tool industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Appliance & Tool industry in last five years.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Appliance & Tool industry, but Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech to focus more on services in the Appliance & Tool industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech has high operating costs in the Appliance & Tool industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech, in the dynamic environment of Appliance & Tool industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Appliance & Tool industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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. Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Appliance & Tool industry. This can help Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech to build a more holistic ecosystem for Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech products in the Appliance & Tool industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Appliance & Tool 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Appliance & Tool industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Appliance & Tool industry.
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. Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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, Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech can develop new processes and procedures in Appliance & Tool industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Threats Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Appliance & Tool industry.
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 Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
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. Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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.
Environmental challenges
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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. Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Appliance & Tool industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech is facing in Appliance & Tool sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Appliance & Tool industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech in Appliance & Tool industry. The Appliance & Tool 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Appliance & Tool industry are lowering. It can presents Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Appliance & Tool sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Appliance & Tool industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Appliance & Tool industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Appliance & Tool 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Appliance & Tool industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech
– 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 Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech 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 Zhejiang Zhongjian Tech needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
