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 – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, 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 -

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.

Training and development

– Noble Century Investment has one of the best training and development program in Consumer/Non-Cyclical 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.

Analytics focus

– Noble Century Investment 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 Food Processing 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 lead change in Food Processing

– Noble Century Investment is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Food Processing industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Noble Century Investment in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

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.

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.

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.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Noble Century Investment in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Noble Century Investment has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Noble Century Investment to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

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.

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.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Noble Century Investment in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Noble Century Investment 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.

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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 -

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.

Need for greater diversity

– Noble Century Investment 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.

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 Noble Century Investment supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Noble Century Investment is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Noble Century Investment vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Noble Century Investment 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.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Noble Century Investment 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.

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.

Skills based hiring in Food Processing industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Noble Century Investment 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.

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.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at Noble Century Investment, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Noble Century Investment has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Noble Century Investment is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Food Processing industry in last five years.

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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 -

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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Noble Century Investment can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Noble Century Investment operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.

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.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Noble Century Investment 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 Food Processing industry.

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.

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.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Noble Century Investment 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. Noble Century Investment 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.

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.

Loyalty marketing

– Noble Century Investment 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.

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.

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.

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.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Noble Century Investment is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Noble Century Investment can utilize new technology in the field of Food Processing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

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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 -

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.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Food Processing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Noble Century Investment can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

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.

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.

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.

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 Noble Century Investment business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

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.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Noble Century Investment 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 Noble Century Investment prominent markets.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Noble Century Investment is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

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.

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.

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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Noble Century Investment 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 Food Processing industry.

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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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