SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Shenzhen Jiang Design (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Shenzhen Jiang Design is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Shenzhen Jiang Design
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Shenzhen Jiang Design can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Shenzhen Jiang Design, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Shenzhen Jiang Design
2. Improving business portfolio management of Shenzhen Jiang Design
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 Shenzhen Jiang Design
Strengths of Shenzhen Jiang Design | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Shenzhen Jiang Design are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Shenzhen Jiang Design is present in almost all the verticals within the Business Services industry. This has provided Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Training and development
– Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Shenzhen Jiang Design is one of the leading players in the Business Services 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Shenzhen Jiang Design has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Shenzhen Jiang Design to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Shenzhen Jiang Design
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Shenzhen Jiang Design does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management in the Business Services industry
– Shenzhen Jiang Design is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Shenzhen Jiang Design is one of the most innovative firm in Business Services sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Shenzhen Jiang Design has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Shenzhen Jiang Design staying ahead in the Business Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Shenzhen Jiang Design | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Shenzhen Jiang Design are -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Shenzhen Jiang Design needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Business Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Business Services industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Business Services industry using digital technology.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Shenzhen Jiang Design is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Business Services industry, but Shenzhen Jiang Design needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Shenzhen Jiang Design to focus more on services in the Business Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Shenzhen Jiang Design, in the dynamic environment of Business Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Shenzhen Jiang Design has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High dependence on Shenzhen Jiang Design ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Shenzhen Jiang Design still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Business Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Shenzhen Jiang Design has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Shenzhen Jiang Design 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. Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Skills based hiring in Business Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Shenzhen Jiang Design products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Shenzhen Jiang Design needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Shenzhen Jiang Design is planning to shift buying processes online.
Shenzhen Jiang Design Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Shenzhen Jiang Design are -
Loyalty marketing
– Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Shenzhen Jiang Design in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Business Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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 Shenzhen Jiang Design in the Business Services industry. Now Shenzhen Jiang Design can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Shenzhen Jiang Design to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
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. Shenzhen Jiang Design can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Shenzhen Jiang Design can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Shenzhen Jiang Design can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Business Services industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Threats Shenzhen Jiang Design External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Shenzhen Jiang Design 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. Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
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 Shenzhen Jiang Design.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Business Services industry are lowering. It can presents Shenzhen Jiang Design with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Business Services sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Business Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design in Business Services industry. The Business Services 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Shenzhen Jiang Design has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Business Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Shenzhen Jiang Design 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.
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 Shenzhen Jiang Design in the Business Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Shenzhen Jiang Design
– 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Shenzhen Jiang Design Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design 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 Shenzhen Jiang Design needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.