SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Yunnan Bowin Tech (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Yunnan Bowin Tech is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Yunnan Bowin Tech
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Yunnan Bowin Tech can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Yunnan Bowin Tech, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Yunnan Bowin 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 Yunnan Bowin Tech can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Yunnan Bowin Tech
2. Improving business portfolio management of Yunnan Bowin Tech
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Construction - Raw Materials sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Yunnan Bowin Tech
Strengths of Yunnan Bowin Tech | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Yunnan Bowin Tech are -
Strong track record of project management in the Construction - Raw Materials industry
– Yunnan Bowin 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– Yunnan Bowin Tech has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Yunnan Bowin Tech to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Yunnan Bowin Tech to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Construction - Raw Materials
– Yunnan Bowin Tech is one of the leading players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Yunnan Bowin Tech in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Innovation driven organization
– Yunnan Bowin Tech is one of the most innovative firm in Construction - Raw Materials sector.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Yunnan Bowin 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Yunnan Bowin Tech has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Yunnan Bowin Tech 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.
High brand equity
– Yunnan Bowin Tech has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Yunnan Bowin Tech to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Yunnan Bowin Tech comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Yunnan Bowin Tech has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Construction - Raw Materials industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Yunnan Bowin Tech have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Yunnan Bowin 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Yunnan Bowin Tech in Construction - Raw Materials industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Yunnan Bowin Tech has one of the best training and development program in Capital Goods 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.
Weaknesses of Yunnan Bowin Tech | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Yunnan Bowin Tech are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Yunnan Bowin Tech has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Construction - Raw Materials industry over the last five years. Yunnan Bowin Tech 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Yunnan Bowin Tech products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Yunnan Bowin Tech needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Yunnan Bowin Tech has some of the most successful models in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Yunnan Bowin Tech should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Yunnan Bowin Tech 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Yunnan Bowin Tech 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Yunnan Bowin Tech is just above the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Yunnan Bowin Tech is one of the leading players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in last five years.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Yunnan Bowin Tech has high operating costs in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Yunnan Bowin Tech lucrative customers.
High dependence on Yunnan Bowin Tech ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Yunnan Bowin Tech still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Construction - Raw Materials industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Yunnan Bowin Tech has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ less understanding of Yunnan Bowin Tech strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Yunnan Bowin Tech 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.
Skills based hiring in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Yunnan Bowin 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.
Yunnan Bowin Tech Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Yunnan Bowin Tech are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Yunnan Bowin Tech can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Yunnan Bowin 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Yunnan Bowin 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Yunnan Bowin Tech has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Construction - Raw Materials industry. This can help Yunnan Bowin Tech to build a more holistic ecosystem for Yunnan Bowin Tech products in the Construction - Raw Materials industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Yunnan Bowin 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 Yunnan Bowin Tech to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Yunnan Bowin 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Yunnan Bowin Tech can develop new processes and procedures in Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Yunnan Bowin Tech has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Construction - Raw Materials sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Yunnan Bowin Tech to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Yunnan Bowin Tech to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Yunnan Bowin 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.
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 Yunnan Bowin Tech 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Yunnan Bowin Tech can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Yunnan Bowin 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Yunnan Bowin Tech is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Yunnan Bowin Tech can utilize new technology in the field of Construction - Raw Materials industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats Yunnan Bowin Tech External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Yunnan Bowin Tech are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Yunnan Bowin Tech in Construction - Raw Materials industry. The Construction - Raw Materials 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.
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. Yunnan Bowin 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.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Yunnan Bowin Tech needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Construction - Raw Materials industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Yunnan Bowin Tech has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Yunnan Bowin Tech needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Yunnan Bowin Tech may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Construction - Raw Materials sector.
Environmental challenges
– Yunnan Bowin 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. Yunnan Bowin Tech can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Construction - Raw Materials industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Yunnan Bowin Tech 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
– Yunnan Bowin 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Yunnan Bowin 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 Yunnan Bowin Tech.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Yunnan Bowin 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry and other sectors.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Yunnan Bowin Tech 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 Yunnan Bowin Tech prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Yunnan Bowin Tech is facing in Construction - Raw Materials sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Yunnan Bowin Tech Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Yunnan Bowin 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 Yunnan Bowin 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 Yunnan Bowin 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 Yunnan Bowin 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 Yunnan Bowin Tech needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.