SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Everchina Intl (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Everchina Intl is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, 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 Everchina Intl can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Everchina Intl, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Everchina Intl 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 Everchina Intl can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Everchina Intl
2. Improving business portfolio management of Everchina Intl
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Waste Management Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Everchina Intl
Strengths of Everchina Intl | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Everchina Intl are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Everchina Intl 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.
Learning organization
- Everchina Intl 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 Everchina Intl is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Everchina Intl emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Everchina Intl comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Waste Management Services industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Innovation driven organization
– Everchina Intl is one of the most innovative firm in Waste Management Services sector.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Everchina Intl has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Waste Management Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Everchina Intl have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Diverse revenue streams
– Everchina Intl is present in almost all the verticals within the Waste Management Services industry. This has provided Everchina Intl 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.
High brand equity
– Everchina Intl has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Everchina Intl to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Everchina Intl in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Everchina Intl has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Everchina Intl to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Everchina Intl 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 Waste Management Services 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Waste Management Services industry
– Everchina Intl has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Everchina Intl to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Waste Management Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Everchina Intl to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Everchina Intl
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Everchina Intl does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Everchina Intl has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Everchina Intl staying ahead in the Waste Management Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Everchina Intl | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Everchina Intl are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Everchina Intl products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Everchina Intl needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
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 Everchina Intl supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Everchina Intl is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Everchina Intl vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Everchina Intl is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Everchina Intl to provide better information regarding Waste Management Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, Everchina Intl needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Everchina Intl, in the dynamic environment of Waste Management Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Everchina Intl has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Waste Management Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Everchina Intl is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Waste Management Services industry.
Need for greater diversity
– Everchina Intl 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Everchina Intl has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Waste Management Services industry over the last five years. Everchina Intl 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 dependence on Everchina Intl ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Everchina Intl still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Waste Management Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Everchina Intl has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Skills based hiring in Waste Management Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Everchina Intl 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Everchina Intl strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Everchina Intl 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.
Everchina Intl Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Everchina Intl are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Everchina Intl 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Everchina Intl has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Waste Management Services industry. This can help Everchina Intl to build a more holistic ecosystem for Everchina Intl products in the Waste Management Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Everchina Intl has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Waste Management Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Everchina Intl to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Everchina Intl to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Everchina Intl in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Waste Management Services 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. Everchina Intl can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Manufacturing automation
– Everchina Intl can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Waste Management Services 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Everchina Intl can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Everchina Intl 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
– Everchina Intl 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Everchina Intl can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Waste Management Services 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Waste Management Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Everchina Intl can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Waste Management Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Everchina Intl 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. Everchina Intl 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Everchina Intl 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 Everchina Intl to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Threats Everchina Intl External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Everchina Intl are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Everchina Intl may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Waste Management Services sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Everchina Intl 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 Waste Management Services industry.
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 Everchina Intl business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Everchina Intl
– 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 Everchina Intl.
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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Everchina Intl 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 Everchina Intl prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Everchina Intl 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.
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. Everchina Intl needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Waste Management Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Everchina Intl is facing in Waste Management Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Everchina Intl in Waste Management Services industry. The Waste Management Services 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Waste Management Services industry are lowering. It can presents Everchina Intl with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Waste Management Services sector.
Environmental challenges
– Everchina Intl 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. Everchina Intl can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Waste Management Services industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Everchina Intl Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Everchina Intl 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 Everchina Intl 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 Everchina Intl 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 Everchina Intl 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 Everchina Intl needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.