Wing Chi Holdings (6080) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Construction Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Wing Chi Holdings (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Wing Chi Holdings is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Wing Chi Holdings
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Wing Chi Holdings can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Wing Chi Holdings, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Wing Chi Holdings
2. Improving business portfolio management of Wing Chi Holdings
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 Wing Chi Holdings
Strengths of Wing Chi Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Wing Chi Holdings are -
Learning organization
- Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Wing Chi Holdings emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Wing Chi Holdings 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
– Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Wing Chi Holdings in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Wing Chi Holdings has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Wing Chi Holdings to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Construction Services industry
– Wing Chi Holdings has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Wing Chi Holdings to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Construction Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Wing Chi Holdings to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Construction Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Wing Chi Holdings digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Construction Services industry
– Wing Chi Holdings is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Training and development
– Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Wing Chi Holdings is present in almost all the verticals within the Construction Services industry. This has provided Wing Chi Holdings 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.
High brand equity
– Wing Chi Holdings has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Wing Chi Holdings to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Weaknesses of Wing Chi Holdings | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Wing Chi Holdings are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, Wing Chi Holdings needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Skills based hiring in Construction Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Construction Services industry, Wing Chi Holdings needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Lack of clear differentiation of Wing Chi Holdings products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Wing Chi Holdings needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Wing Chi Holdings has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Construction Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Wing Chi Holdings has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Construction Services industry over the last five years. Wing Chi Holdings even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Wing Chi Holdings is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Wing Chi Holdings is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Wing Chi Holdings to provide better information regarding Construction Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Wing Chi Holdings Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Wing Chi Holdings are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Construction Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Wing Chi Holdings 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. Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Construction Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Wing Chi Holdings can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Wing Chi Holdings can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Wing Chi Holdings can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Construction 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
– Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Wing Chi Holdings to increase its market reach. Wing Chi Holdings 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.
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 Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Wing Chi Holdings is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Threats Wing Chi Holdings External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Wing Chi Holdings are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Wing Chi Holdings has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Construction Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Wing Chi Holdings 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. Wing Chi Holdings 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.
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 Wing Chi Holdings.
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 Wing Chi Holdings in the Construction Services 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 Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Wing Chi Holdings is facing in Construction Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Construction Services sector.
Increasing wage structure of Wing Chi Holdings
– 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 Wing Chi Holdings.
Environmental challenges
– Wing Chi Holdings 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. Wing Chi Holdings can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Construction Services industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Wing Chi Holdings 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Wing Chi Holdings Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings 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 Wing Chi Holdings needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.