Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Wonderful Sky Financial is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
increasing energy prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Wonderful Sky Financial
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Wonderful Sky Financial can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Wonderful Sky Financial, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Wonderful Sky Financial
2. Improving business portfolio management of Wonderful Sky Financial
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 Wonderful Sky Financial
Strengths of Wonderful Sky Financial | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Wonderful Sky Financial are -
High brand equity
– Wonderful Sky Financial has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Wonderful Sky Financial to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Wonderful Sky Financial
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Wonderful Sky Financial does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Wonderful Sky Financial comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Business 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Wonderful Sky Financial is present in almost all the verticals within the Business Services industry. This has provided Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Wonderful Sky Financial is one of the most innovative firm in Business Services sector.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Business Services industry
– Wonderful Sky Financial is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Wonderful Sky Financial in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Wonderful Sky Financial has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Wonderful Sky Financial to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Digital Transformation in Business Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Wonderful Sky Financial digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Learning organization
- Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Wonderful Sky Financial emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Wonderful Sky Financial has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Wonderful Sky Financial staying ahead in the Business Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Wonderful Sky Financial | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Wonderful Sky Financial are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Wonderful Sky Financial has some of the most successful models in the Business Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Wonderful Sky Financial should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on Wonderful Sky Financial ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Wonderful Sky Financial is just above the Business Services 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Wonderful Sky Financial has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the Business Services industry using digital technology.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Business Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Skills based hiring in Business Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Wonderful Sky Financial is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Wonderful Sky Financial 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, Wonderful Sky Financial is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Wonderful Sky Financial to provide better information regarding Business Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Wonderful Sky Financial products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Wonderful Sky Financial needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Wonderful Sky Financial Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Wonderful Sky Financial are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Wonderful Sky Financial can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Wonderful Sky Financial is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Wonderful Sky Financial can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Wonderful Sky Financial to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Wonderful Sky Financial can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Business 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.
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. Wonderful Sky Financial 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. Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Wonderful Sky Financial to increase its market reach. Wonderful Sky Financial will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Wonderful Sky Financial has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Business Services industry. This can help Wonderful Sky Financial to build a more holistic ecosystem for Wonderful Sky Financial products in the Business Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
Threats Wonderful Sky Financial External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Wonderful Sky Financial are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Business Services industry are lowering. It can presents Wonderful Sky Financial with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Business Services sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
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 Wonderful Sky Financial in the Business Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Wonderful Sky Financial can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Wonderful Sky Financial needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Business Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Wonderful Sky Financial is facing in Business Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Wonderful Sky Financial has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Business Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Wonderful Sky Financial needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Business Services sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Business Services industry and other sectors.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
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 Wonderful Sky Financial business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Wonderful Sky Financial 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.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Wonderful Sky Financial Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial 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 Wonderful Sky Financial needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
