Lai Sun Garment (191) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Real Estate Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Lai Sun Garment (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Lai Sun Garment is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
geopolitical disruptions, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Lai Sun Garment can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lai Sun Garment, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Lai Sun Garment
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lai Sun Garment
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 Lai Sun Garment
Strengths of Lai Sun Garment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lai Sun Garment are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Lai Sun Garment 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Lai Sun Garment has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Lai Sun Garment 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Real Estate Operations industry
– Lai Sun Garment has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Lai Sun Garment to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Real Estate Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Lai Sun Garment to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Lai Sun Garment 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.
Digital Transformation in Real Estate Operations industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Lai Sun Garment digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Lai Sun Garment 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.
Learning organization
- Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Lai Sun Garment emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Lai Sun Garment has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Lai Sun Garment staying ahead in the Real Estate Operations industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Lai Sun Garment 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 lead change in Real Estate Operations
– Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Lai Sun Garment
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Lai Sun Garment does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Lai Sun Garment is present in almost all the verticals within the Real Estate Operations industry. This has provided Lai Sun Garment 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.
Weaknesses of Lai Sun Garment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Lai Sun Garment are -
Employees’ less understanding of Lai Sun Garment strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Lai Sun Garment 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Lai Sun Garment has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Real Estate Operations industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Lai Sun Garment is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Real Estate Operations industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Lai Sun Garment 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, Lai Sun Garment needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on Lai Sun Garment ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Lai Sun Garment is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Real Estate Operations industry, but Lai Sun Garment needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Lai Sun Garment to focus more on services in the Real Estate Operations industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Real Estate Operations industry, Lai Sun Garment 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
– Lai Sun Garment 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Lai Sun Garment products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Lai Sun Garment needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Lai Sun Garment 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.
Lai Sun Garment Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Lai Sun Garment are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Lai Sun Garment can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Lai Sun Garment operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Real Estate Operations sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Lai Sun Garment 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Lai Sun Garment can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Lai Sun Garment to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Lai Sun Garment 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Lai Sun Garment 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Lai Sun Garment has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Real Estate Operations industry. This can help Lai Sun Garment to build a more holistic ecosystem for Lai Sun Garment products in the Real Estate Operations industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Lai Sun Garment 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Real Estate Operations industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Lai Sun Garment in the Real Estate Operations industry. Now Lai Sun Garment can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Lai Sun Garment is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Lai Sun Garment 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Lai Sun Garment to increase its market reach. Lai Sun Garment 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Lai Sun Garment are -
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. Lai Sun Garment can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment prominent markets.
Environmental challenges
– Lai Sun Garment 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. Lai Sun Garment can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Real Estate Operations industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Real Estate Operations industry are lowering. It can presents Lai Sun Garment 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lai Sun Garment 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. Lai Sun Garment 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
– Lai Sun Garment 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.
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 Lai Sun Garment business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Lai Sun Garment
– 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 Lai Sun Garment.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Lai Sun Garment has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Real Estate Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Lai Sun Garment 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Lai Sun Garment 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.
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 Lai Sun Garment Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment 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 Lai Sun Garment needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.