SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Wuhan Nusun Landscape (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Wuhan Nusun Landscape is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Wuhan Nusun Landscape
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Wuhan Nusun Landscape can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Wuhan Nusun Landscape, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Wuhan Nusun Landscape
2. Improving business portfolio management of Wuhan Nusun Landscape
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Personal Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Wuhan Nusun Landscape
Strengths of Wuhan Nusun Landscape | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Wuhan Nusun Landscape are -
Ability to lead change in Personal Services
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape is one of the leading players in the Personal Services industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Personal Services industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Wuhan Nusun Landscape in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Wuhan Nusun Landscape to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Wuhan Nusun Landscape in Personal Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Personal Services industry. The technology infrastructure of China is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Digital Transformation in Personal Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Wuhan Nusun Landscape digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Personal Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Wuhan Nusun Landscape have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Wuhan Nusun Landscape in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Wuhan Nusun Landscape has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Wuhan Nusun Landscape to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Wuhan Nusun Landscape comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Personal 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape is one of the most innovative firm in Personal Services sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Wuhan Nusun Landscape staying ahead in the Personal Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape is one of the leading players in the Personal 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.
Weaknesses of Wuhan Nusun Landscape | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Wuhan Nusun Landscape are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Wuhan Nusun Landscape needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ less understanding of Wuhan Nusun Landscape strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Wuhan Nusun Landscape is just above the Personal Services industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Wuhan Nusun Landscape has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Personal Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Personal Services industry, Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Wuhan Nusun Landscape, in the dynamic environment of Personal Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Wuhan Nusun Landscape has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Wuhan Nusun Landscape is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Wuhan Nusun Landscape to provide better information regarding Personal Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Wuhan Nusun Landscape needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Personal Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Wuhan Nusun Landscape can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Wuhan Nusun Landscape is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Wuhan Nusun Landscape has some of the most successful models in the Personal Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Wuhan Nusun Landscape should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Wuhan Nusun Landscape Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Wuhan Nusun Landscape are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Wuhan Nusun Landscape in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Personal Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Wuhan Nusun Landscape has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Personal Services industry. This can help Wuhan Nusun Landscape to build a more holistic ecosystem for Wuhan Nusun Landscape products in the Personal Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape can develop new processes and procedures in Personal Services 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Wuhan Nusun Landscape is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Wuhan Nusun Landscape can utilize new technology in the field of Personal Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Personal Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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. Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Personal Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Wuhan Nusun Landscape in the Personal Services industry. Now Wuhan Nusun Landscape can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Wuhan Nusun Landscape External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Wuhan Nusun Landscape are -
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Wuhan Nusun Landscape business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Personal Services industry and other sectors.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Wuhan Nusun Landscape may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Personal Services sector.
Increasing wage structure of Wuhan Nusun Landscape
– 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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape.
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. Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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.
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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Personal Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Wuhan Nusun Landscape can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Regulatory challenges
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Personal Services industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Wuhan Nusun Landscape has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Wuhan Nusun Landscape needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal Services sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Wuhan Nusun Landscape is facing in Personal Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Wuhan Nusun Landscape Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape 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 Wuhan Nusun Landscape needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
