New Century Hong Kong (234) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Recreational Activities
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for New Century Hong Kong (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , New Century Hong Kong is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of New Century Hong Kong
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that New Century Hong Kong can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the New Century Hong Kong, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which New Century Hong Kong 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 Hong Kong can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of New Century Hong Kong
2. Improving business portfolio management of New Century Hong Kong
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Recreational Activities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of New Century Hong Kong
Strengths of New Century Hong Kong | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of New Century Hong Kong are -
Training and development
– New Century Hong Kong 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.
Organizational Resilience of New Century Hong Kong
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing New Century Hong Kong does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Analytics focus
– New Century Hong Kong 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 Recreational Activities 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that New Century Hong Kong 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– New Century Hong Kong has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – New Century Hong Kong staying ahead in the Recreational Activities industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– New Century Hong Kong has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Recreational Activities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of New Century Hong Kong have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of New Century Hong Kong comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Recreational Activities 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Recreational Activities industry
– New Century Hong Kong has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled New Century Hong Kong to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Recreational Activities industry. The sustainable margins have also helped New Century Hong Kong to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Recreational Activities industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For New Century Hong Kong digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. New Century Hong Kong 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
– New Century Hong Kong has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. New Century Hong Kong 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.
Ability to lead change in Recreational Activities
– New Century Hong Kong is one of the leading players in the Recreational Activities industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Recreational Activities industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled New Century Hong Kong 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 Hong Kong in Recreational Activities industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of New Century Hong Kong | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of New Century Hong Kong are -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, New Century Hong Kong has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of New Century Hong Kong is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Recreational Activities industry, but New Century Hong Kong needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help New Century Hong Kong to focus more on services in the Recreational Activities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of New Century Hong Kong products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, New Century Hong Kong needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
New Century Hong Kong has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Recreational Activities industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of New Century Hong Kong is just above the Recreational Activities 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, New Century Hong Kong needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As New Century Hong Kong is one of the leading players in the Recreational Activities industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Recreational Activities industry in last five years.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, New Century Hong Kong has high operating costs in the Recreational Activities industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract New Century Hong Kong lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of New Century Hong Kong, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Recreational Activities 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.
Employees’ less understanding of New Century Hong Kong strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of New Century Hong Kong 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, New Century Hong Kong is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help New Century Hong Kong to provide better information regarding Recreational Activities products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
New Century Hong Kong Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of New Century Hong Kong are -
Loyalty marketing
– New Century Hong Kong 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– New Century Hong Kong has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Recreational Activities sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled New Century Hong Kong to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help New Century Hong Kong to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Recreational Activities industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for New Century Hong Kong in the Recreational Activities industry. Now New Century Hong Kong can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Buying journey improvements
– New Century Hong Kong can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Recreational Activities 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– New Century Hong Kong 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 Hong Kong 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Recreational Activities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. New Century Hong Kong 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 Hong Kong 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for New Century Hong Kong 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.
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. New Century Hong Kong can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at New Century Hong Kong 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 Recreational Activities industry.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help New Century Hong Kong to increase its market reach. New Century Hong Kong 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for New Century Hong Kong 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 Hong Kong to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of New Century Hong Kong has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Recreational Activities industry. This can help New Century Hong Kong to build a more holistic ecosystem for New Century Hong Kong products in the Recreational Activities industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats New Century Hong Kong External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of New Century Hong Kong are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– New Century Hong Kong 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, New Century Hong Kong may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Recreational Activities sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Recreational Activities industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. New Century Hong Kong can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– New Century Hong Kong 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. New Century Hong Kong can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Recreational Activities industry.
Increasing wage structure of New Century Hong Kong
– 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 Hong Kong.
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.
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 Hong Kong needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Recreational Activities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Hong Kong in the Recreational Activities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for New Century Hong Kong in Recreational Activities industry. The Recreational Activities 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– New Century Hong Kong 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 Recreational Activities industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that New Century Hong Kong is facing in Recreational Activities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, New Century Hong Kong 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 Century Hong Kong prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– New Century Hong Kong 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 Recreational Activities industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of New Century Hong Kong Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at New Century Hong Kong 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 Hong Kong 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 Hong Kong 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 Hong Kong 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 Hong Kong needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.