Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Legend Strategy Intl is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing commodity prices, increasing energy prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
there is backlash against globalization, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Legend Strategy Intl
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Legend Strategy Intl can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Legend Strategy Intl, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Legend Strategy Intl 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 Legend Strategy Intl can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Legend Strategy Intl
2. Improving business portfolio management of Legend Strategy Intl
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Hotels & Motels sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Legend Strategy Intl
Strengths of Legend Strategy Intl | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Legend Strategy Intl are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Legend Strategy Intl in Hotels & Motels industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Legend Strategy Intl 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.
Organizational Resilience of Legend Strategy Intl
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Legend Strategy Intl does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Legend Strategy Intl in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Legend Strategy Intl has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Legend Strategy Intl to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Legend Strategy Intl is one of the most innovative firm in Hotels & Motels sector.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Legend Strategy Intl 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Legend Strategy Intl is present in almost all the verticals within the Hotels & Motels industry. This has provided Legend Strategy Intl 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.
Learning organization
- Legend Strategy Intl 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 Legend Strategy Intl is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Legend Strategy Intl emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Legend Strategy Intl 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Legend Strategy Intl has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Legend Strategy Intl staying ahead in the Hotels & Motels industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Legend Strategy Intl has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Legend Strategy Intl to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Hotels & Motels industry
– Legend Strategy Intl has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Legend Strategy Intl to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Hotels & Motels industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Legend Strategy Intl to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses of Legend Strategy Intl | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Legend Strategy Intl are -
Skills based hiring in Hotels & Motels industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Legend Strategy Intl 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, Legend Strategy Intl is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Legend Strategy Intl to provide better information regarding Hotels & Motels products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Legend Strategy Intl is just above the Hotels & Motels 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Legend Strategy Intl has some of the most successful models in the Hotels & Motels industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Legend Strategy Intl should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Hotels & Motels industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Legend Strategy Intl 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 Hotels & Motels industry.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Legend Strategy Intl has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Hotels & Motels industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, Legend Strategy Intl needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Legend Strategy Intl 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 Hotels & Motels industry using digital technology.
Employees’ less understanding of Legend Strategy Intl strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Legend Strategy Intl 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 strategic competitive environment developments
– As Legend Strategy Intl is one of the leading players in the Hotels & Motels industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Hotels & Motels industry in last five years.
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 Legend Strategy Intl supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Legend Strategy Intl is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Legend Strategy Intl vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Legend Strategy Intl Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Legend Strategy Intl are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Legend Strategy Intl can develop new processes and procedures in Hotels & Motels 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Legend Strategy Intl 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Legend Strategy Intl 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Legend Strategy Intl 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Legend Strategy Intl can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. Legend Strategy Intl can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Legend Strategy Intl has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Hotels & Motels industry. This can help Legend Strategy Intl to build a more holistic ecosystem for Legend Strategy Intl products in the Hotels & Motels industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Legend Strategy Intl 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 Legend Strategy Intl to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Legend Strategy Intl can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Legend Strategy Intl operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Hotels & Motels sector.
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 Legend Strategy Intl 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 Hotels & Motels industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Legend Strategy Intl 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. Legend Strategy Intl 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Hotels & Motels industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Legend Strategy Intl in the Hotels & Motels industry. Now Legend Strategy Intl can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Buying journey improvements
– Legend Strategy Intl can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Hotels & Motels 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.
Threats Legend Strategy Intl External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Legend Strategy Intl are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Legend Strategy Intl has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Hotels & Motels industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Legend Strategy Intl needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Hotels & Motels 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 Legend Strategy Intl 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 Hotels & Motels industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Legend Strategy Intl 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. Legend Strategy Intl can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Hotels & Motels industry.
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. Legend Strategy Intl needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Hotels & Motels industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Legend Strategy Intl in Hotels & Motels industry. The Hotels & Motels 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 Legend Strategy Intl business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Legend Strategy Intl in the Hotels & Motels sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Legend Strategy Intl is facing in Hotels & Motels sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Legend Strategy Intl may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Hotels & Motels sector.
Increasing wage structure of Legend Strategy Intl
– 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 Legend Strategy Intl.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Legend Strategy Intl 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Legend Strategy Intl 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 Legend Strategy Intl prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Legend Strategy Intl Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Legend Strategy Intl 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 Legend Strategy Intl 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 Legend Strategy Intl 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 Legend Strategy Intl 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 Legend Strategy Intl needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.