New Century Real Estate (1275) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Real Estate Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for New Century Real Estate (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , New Century Real Estate is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, wage bills are increasing, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of New Century Real Estate
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that New Century Real Estate can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the New Century Real Estate, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which New Century Real Estate 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 Century Real Estate can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of New Century Real Estate
2. Improving business portfolio management of New Century Real Estate
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Real Estate Operations sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of New Century Real Estate
Strengths of New Century Real Estate | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of New Century Real Estate are -
Strong track record of project management in the Real Estate Operations industry
– New Century Real Estate is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Organizational Resilience of New Century Real Estate
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing New Century Real Estate does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– New Century Real Estate is present in almost all the verticals within the Real Estate Operations industry. This has provided New Century Real Estate 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of New Century Real Estate comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Real Estate Operations industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
High brand equity
– New Century Real Estate has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled New Century Real Estate to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Real Estate Operations industry
– New Century Real Estate has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled New Century Real Estate to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Real Estate Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped New Century Real Estate to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– New Century Real Estate has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Real Estate Operations industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of New Century Real Estate have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– New Century Real Estate is one of the leading players in the Real Estate Operations industry in Hong Kong. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Hong Kong. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- New Century Real Estate 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 New Century Real Estate is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at New Century Real Estate emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Real Estate Operations
– New Century Real Estate is one of the leading players in the Real Estate Operations industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Real Estate Operations industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled New Century Real Estate in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of New Century Real Estate in Real Estate Operations industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– New Century Real Estate 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 Real Estate Operations 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.
Weaknesses of New Century Real Estate | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of New Century Real Estate are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, New Century Real Estate needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, New Century Real Estate is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help New Century Real Estate to provide better information regarding Real Estate Operations products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that New Century Real Estate needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Real Estate Operations industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at New Century Real Estate can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as New Century Real Estate is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though New Century Real Estate has some of the most successful models in the Real Estate Operations industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. New Century Real Estate should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at New Century Real Estate, in the dynamic environment of Real Estate Operations industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. New Century Real Estate has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of New Century Real Estate is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Real Estate Operations industry, but New Century Real Estate needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help New Century Real Estate to focus more on services in the Real Estate Operations industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of New Century Real Estate is just above the Real Estate Operations 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.
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 Century Real Estate supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, New Century Real Estate is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left New Century Real Estate vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– New Century Real Estate 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.
Employees’ less understanding of New Century Real Estate strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of New Century Real Estate don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
New Century Real Estate has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Real Estate Operations industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
New Century Real Estate Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of New Century Real Estate are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for New Century Real Estate 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 Century Real Estate to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Real Estate Operations industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for New Century Real Estate in the Real Estate Operations industry. Now New Century Real Estate can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at New Century Real Estate 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 Real Estate Operations industry.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Real Estate Operations industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. New Century Real Estate can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– New Century Real Estate has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Real Estate Operations sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled New Century Real Estate to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help New Century Real Estate 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 New Century Real Estate in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Real Estate Operations industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Real Estate Operations industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. New Century Real Estate 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 Century Real Estate 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– New Century Real Estate 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.
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 Century Real Estate 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.
Manufacturing automation
– New Century Real Estate can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Real Estate Operations 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.
Buying journey improvements
– New Century Real Estate can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Real Estate Operations industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for New Century Real Estate 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, New Century Real Estate can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that New Century Real Estate operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Real Estate Operations sector.
Threats New Century Real Estate External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of New Century Real Estate are -
Increasing wage structure of New Century Real Estate
– 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 Century Real Estate.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that New Century Real Estate is facing in Real Estate Operations sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Century Real Estate needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Real Estate Operations 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Real Estate Operations industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. New Century Real Estate can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Real Estate Operations industry are lowering. It can presents New Century Real Estate with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Real Estate Operations sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– New Century Real Estate 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 Real Estate Operations industry.
Regulatory challenges
– New Century Real Estate needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Real Estate Operations industry regulations.
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 Century Real Estate 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.
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 Century Real Estate in the Real Estate Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 New Century Real Estate business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Century Real Estate.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, New Century Real Estate may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Real Estate Operations sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of New Century Real Estate Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at New Century Real Estate 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 Century Real Estate 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 Century Real Estate 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 Century Real Estate 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 Century Real Estate needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.