SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Coastal Greenland (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Coastal Greenland is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Coastal Greenland
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Coastal Greenland can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Coastal Greenland, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Coastal Greenland 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 Coastal Greenland can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Coastal Greenland
2. Improving business portfolio management of Coastal Greenland
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Construction Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Coastal Greenland
Strengths of Coastal Greenland | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Coastal Greenland are -
Digital Transformation in Construction Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Coastal Greenland digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Coastal Greenland 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Coastal Greenland has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Coastal Greenland 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Coastal Greenland has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
High brand equity
– Coastal Greenland has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Coastal Greenland to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Coastal Greenland in Construction Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Coastal Greenland is one of the leading players in the Construction 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.
Training and development
– Coastal Greenland has one of the best training and development program in Capital Goods industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Analytics focus
– Coastal Greenland 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 Construction 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
– Coastal Greenland has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Construction Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Coastal Greenland have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Coastal Greenland comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Construction 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.
Ability to lead change in Construction Services
– Coastal Greenland is one of the leading players in the Construction Services industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Construction Services industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Coastal Greenland in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management in the Construction Services industry
– Coastal Greenland is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of Coastal Greenland | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Coastal Greenland are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Coastal Greenland is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Construction Services industry, but Coastal Greenland needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Coastal Greenland to focus more on services in the Construction Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Coastal Greenland, in the dynamic environment of Construction Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Coastal Greenland has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Coastal Greenland, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Construction 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, Coastal Greenland needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Coastal Greenland is one of the leading players in the Construction Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Construction Services industry in last five years.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Coastal Greenland needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Construction Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Coastal Greenland can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Coastal Greenland is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Coastal Greenland has some of the most successful models in the Construction Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Coastal Greenland should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Coastal Greenland 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 Construction Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Coastal Greenland 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Coastal Greenland is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Coastal Greenland to provide better information regarding Construction Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Construction Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Coastal Greenland 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 Construction Services industry.
Coastal Greenland Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Coastal Greenland are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Coastal Greenland 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Coastal Greenland 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 Coastal Greenland to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Coastal Greenland 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Coastal Greenland is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Coastal Greenland can utilize new technology in the field of Construction Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Coastal Greenland 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Coastal Greenland can develop new processes and procedures in Construction 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Coastal Greenland can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Construction 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Coastal Greenland has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Construction Services industry. This can help Coastal Greenland to build a more holistic ecosystem for Coastal Greenland products in the Construction Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Coastal Greenland 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Coastal Greenland to increase its market reach. Coastal Greenland 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Coastal Greenland can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Coastal Greenland 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 Construction Services industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Coastal Greenland in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Construction Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Coastal Greenland External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Coastal Greenland are -
Environmental challenges
– Coastal Greenland 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. Coastal Greenland can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Construction Services industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Coastal Greenland has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Construction Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Coastal Greenland needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Construction 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.
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. Coastal Greenland 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Coastal Greenland in Construction Services industry. The Construction 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.
Increasing wage structure of Coastal Greenland
– 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 Coastal Greenland.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Construction Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Coastal Greenland can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Coastal Greenland in the Construction Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Coastal Greenland 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 Coastal Greenland prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Coastal Greenland 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 Construction Services industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Construction Services industry are lowering. It can presents Coastal Greenland with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Construction Services sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Coastal Greenland 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 Construction Services industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Coastal Greenland 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 Construction Services industry.
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 Coastal Greenland Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Coastal Greenland 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 Coastal Greenland 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 Coastal Greenland 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 Coastal Greenland 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 Coastal Greenland needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
