K Wah Int (173) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Real Estate Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for K Wah Int (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , K Wah Int is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing energy prices, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that K Wah Int can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the K Wah Int, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which K Wah Int 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 K Wah Int can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of K Wah Int
2. Improving business portfolio management of K Wah Int
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Real Estate Operations sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of K Wah Int
Strengths of K Wah Int | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of K Wah Int are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– K Wah Int has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. K Wah Int 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.
Ability to lead change in Real Estate Operations
– K Wah Int is one of the leading players in the Real Estate Operations industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Real Estate Operations industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled K Wah Int in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- K Wah Int 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 K Wah Int is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at K Wah Int emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– K Wah Int is present in almost all the verticals within the Real Estate Operations industry. This has provided K Wah Int 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of K Wah Int in the Services sector have low bargaining power. K Wah Int has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps K Wah Int to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management in the Real Estate Operations industry
– K Wah Int is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of K Wah Int comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Real Estate Operations 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
– K Wah Int has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Real Estate Operations industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of K Wah Int have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– K Wah Int 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 Real Estate Operations industry. The technology infrastructure of Hong Kong 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– K Wah Int is one of the leading players in the Real Estate Operations industry in Hong Kong. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Hong Kong. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the K Wah Int 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 K Wah Int in Real Estate Operations industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of K Wah Int | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of K Wah Int are -
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of K Wah Int supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, K Wah Int is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left K Wah Int vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High dependence on K Wah Int ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of K Wah Int still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Real Estate Operations industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though K Wah Int has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As K Wah Int is one of the leading players in the Real Estate Operations industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Real Estate Operations industry in last five years.
Employees’ less understanding of K Wah Int strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of K Wah Int 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of K Wah Int products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, K Wah Int needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, K Wah Int is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help K Wah Int to provide better information regarding Real Estate Operations products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Real Estate Operations industry, K Wah Int 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, K Wah Int has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Real Estate Operations industry over the last five years. K Wah Int 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though K Wah Int has some of the most successful models in the Real Estate Operations industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. K Wah Int should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring in Real Estate Operations industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at K Wah Int 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that K Wah Int needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Real Estate Operations industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at K Wah Int can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as K Wah Int is planning to shift buying processes online.
K Wah Int Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of K Wah Int are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Real Estate Operations industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. K Wah Int 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. K Wah Int 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at K Wah Int 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 Real Estate Operations industry.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– K Wah Int has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Real Estate Operations sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled K Wah Int to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help K Wah Int to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Real Estate Operations industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. K Wah Int can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– K Wah Int 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– K Wah Int 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, K Wah Int 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 K Wah Int to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for K Wah Int 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help K Wah Int to increase its market reach. K Wah Int will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for K Wah Int in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Real Estate Operations industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, K Wah Int 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, K Wah Int is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. K Wah Int can utilize new technology in the field of Real Estate Operations industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– K Wah Int can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Real Estate Operations 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.
Threats K Wah Int External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of K Wah Int are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– K Wah Int has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Real Estate Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, K Wah Int needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Real Estate Operations 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.
Increasing wage structure of K Wah Int
– 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 K Wah Int.
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 K Wah Int in the Real Estate Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Real Estate Operations industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. K Wah Int can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– K Wah Int 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 Real Estate Operations industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that K Wah Int is facing in Real Estate Operations sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. K Wah Int 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 dependence on third party suppliers
– K Wah Int 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.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on K Wah Int 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 Real Estate Operations industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Real Estate Operations industry are lowering. It can presents K Wah Int with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Real Estate Operations sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– K Wah Int 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 Real Estate Operations industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of K Wah Int Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at K Wah Int 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 K Wah Int 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 K Wah Int 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 K Wah Int 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 K Wah Int needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
