New Focus Auto Tech (360) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Business Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for New Focus Auto Tech (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , New Focus Auto Tech is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of New Focus Auto Tech
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that New Focus Auto Tech can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the New Focus Auto Tech, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which New Focus Auto Tech 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 New Focus Auto Tech can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of New Focus Auto Tech
2. Improving business portfolio management of New Focus Auto Tech
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Business Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of New Focus Auto Tech
Strengths of New Focus Auto Tech | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of New Focus Auto Tech are -
Training and development
– New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– New Focus Auto Tech is present in almost all the verticals within the Business Services industry. This has provided New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– New Focus Auto Tech has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Digital Transformation in Business Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For New Focus Auto Tech digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Analytics focus
– New Focus Auto Tech 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 Business 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– New Focus Auto Tech has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Business Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of New Focus Auto Tech have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Business Services industry
– New Focus Auto Tech has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled New Focus Auto Tech to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Business Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped New Focus Auto Tech to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– New Focus Auto Tech is one of the most innovative firm in Business Services sector.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of New Focus Auto Tech in Business Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– New Focus Auto Tech is one of the leading players in the Business Services 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.
Ability to lead change in Business Services
– New Focus Auto Tech is one of the leading players in the Business Services industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Business Services industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled New Focus Auto Tech in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– New Focus Auto Tech has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled New Focus Auto Tech to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses of New Focus Auto Tech | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of New Focus Auto Tech are -
Lack of clear differentiation of New Focus Auto Tech products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, New Focus Auto Tech needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in Business Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at New Focus Auto Tech 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.
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 New Focus Auto Tech supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, New Focus Auto Tech is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left New Focus Auto Tech vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at New Focus Auto Tech, in the dynamic environment of Business Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. New Focus Auto Tech has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, New Focus Auto Tech has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Business Services industry over the last five years. New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Need for greater diversity
– New Focus Auto Tech 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of New Focus Auto Tech, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Business Services industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As New Focus Auto Tech is one of the leading players in the Business Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Business Services industry in last five years.
High dependence on New Focus Auto Tech ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of New Focus Auto Tech still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Business Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though New Focus Auto Tech has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Business Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, New Focus Auto Tech 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 Business Services industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that New Focus Auto Tech needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Business Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at New Focus Auto Tech can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as New Focus Auto Tech is planning to shift buying processes online.
New Focus Auto Tech Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of New Focus Auto Tech are -
Loyalty marketing
– New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Business Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. New Focus Auto Tech 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. New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for New Focus Auto Tech 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 New Focus Auto Tech to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Business Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. New Focus Auto Tech can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at New Focus Auto Tech 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 Business Services industry.
Buying journey improvements
– New Focus Auto Tech can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Business 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– New Focus Auto Tech has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Business Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled New Focus Auto Tech to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help New Focus Auto Tech to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Developing new processes and practices
– New Focus Auto Tech can develop new processes and procedures in Business Services industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, New Focus Auto Tech 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 New Focus Auto Tech to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, New Focus Auto Tech is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. New Focus Auto Tech can utilize new technology in the field of Business Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Threats New Focus Auto Tech External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of New Focus Auto Tech are -
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. New Focus Auto Tech needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Business Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
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. New Focus Auto Tech 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Business Services industry are lowering. It can presents New Focus Auto Tech with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Business Services sector.
Regulatory challenges
– New Focus Auto Tech 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 Business Services industry regulations.
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 New Focus Auto Tech.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, New Focus Auto Tech 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 New Focus Auto Tech prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that New Focus Auto Tech is facing in Business Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of New Focus Auto Tech
– 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 New Focus Auto Tech.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Business Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. New Focus Auto Tech can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– New Focus Auto Tech 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 Business Services industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for New Focus Auto Tech in Business Services industry. The Business 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.
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 New Focus Auto Tech in the Business Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of New Focus Auto Tech Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at New Focus Auto Tech 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 New Focus Auto Tech 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 New Focus Auto Tech 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 New Focus Auto Tech 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 New Focus Auto Tech needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
