Noble Century Investment (2322) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Noble Century Investment (Hong Kong)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Noble Century Investment is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, wage bills are increasing, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing energy prices, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Noble Century Investment

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Noble Century Investment can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Noble Century Investment, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Noble Century Investment 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Noble Century Investment can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Noble Century Investment
2. Improving business portfolio management of Noble Century Investment
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Noble Century Investment

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Strengths of Noble Century Investment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Noble Century Investment are -

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Noble Century Investment 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.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Noble Century Investment comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Food Processing 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Noble Century Investment has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Noble Century Investment staying ahead in the Food Processing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Organizational Resilience of Noble Century Investment

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Noble Century Investment does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Noble Century Investment has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Noble Century Investment 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.

Learning organization

- Noble Century Investment 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 Noble Century Investment is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Noble Century Investment emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Noble Century Investment is one of the leading players in the Food Processing 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.

Innovation driven organization

– Noble Century Investment is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.

High brand equity

– Noble Century Investment has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Noble Century Investment to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry

– Noble Century Investment has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Noble Century Investment to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Noble Century Investment to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Diverse revenue streams

– Noble Century Investment is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Noble Century Investment 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.

Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry

– Noble Century Investment is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

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Weaknesses of Noble Century Investment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Noble Century Investment are -

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Noble Century Investment is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Noble Century Investment to provide better information regarding Food Processing products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Noble Century Investment has some of the most successful models in the Food Processing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Noble Century Investment should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Noble Century Investment 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 Food Processing industry using digital technology.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, Noble Century Investment needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

High dependence on Noble Century Investment ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Noble Century Investment still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Food Processing industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Noble Century Investment has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Noble Century Investment is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Noble Century Investment needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Noble Century Investment to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

Employees’ less understanding of Noble Century Investment strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Noble Century Investment 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.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Noble Century Investment has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Food Processing industry over the last five years. Noble Century Investment 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.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Noble Century Investment has high operating costs in the Food Processing industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Noble Century Investment lucrative customers.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Noble Century Investment needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Food Processing industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Noble Century Investment can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Noble Century Investment is planning to shift buying processes online.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Noble Century Investment is just above the Food Processing 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.

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Noble Century Investment Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Noble Century Investment are -

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Noble Century Investment 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.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Noble Century Investment 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Noble Century Investment 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.

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 Noble Century Investment 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

– Noble Century Investment can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Food Processing 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.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Noble Century Investment has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Noble Century Investment to build a more holistic ecosystem for Noble Century Investment products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Noble Century Investment 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 Noble Century Investment to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Noble Century Investment to increase its market reach. Noble Century Investment 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.

Identify volunteer opportunities

– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Noble Century Investment can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Noble Century Investment can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Noble Century Investment 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 Noble Century Investment to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Manufacturing automation

– Noble Century Investment can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Food Processing sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Noble Century Investment in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Food Processing industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

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Threats Noble Century Investment External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Noble Century Investment are -

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Noble Century Investment has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Noble Century Investment needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Food Processing 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.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Noble Century Investment 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.

Environmental challenges

– Noble Century Investment 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. Noble Century Investment can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.

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. Noble Century Investment needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Regulatory challenges

– Noble Century Investment 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 Food Processing industry regulations.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Noble Century Investment in Food Processing industry. The Food Processing 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.

Increasing wage structure of Noble Century Investment

– 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 Noble Century Investment.

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 Noble Century Investment.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Noble Century Investment may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Food Processing sector.

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 Noble Century Investment in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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. Noble Century Investment 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.

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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Noble Century Investment Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Noble Century Investment 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 Noble Century Investment 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 Noble Century Investment 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 Noble Century Investment 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 Noble Century Investment needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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