Ping An SWOT Analysis / Matrix

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SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Ping An managers to do a situational analysis of the company . It is an important technique to understand the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Ping An is facing in its current business environment.

The Ping An is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Ping An maintains its dominant position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis a highly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the organization such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.

The SWOT Analysis framework helps an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Ping An to develop four types of strategies:

SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The core purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Ping An strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Ping An SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Ping An – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Ping An has numerous strengths that help it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of Ping An are –

High level of customer satisfaction – the company with its dedicated customer relationship management department has able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction among present customers and good brand equity among the potential customers.
Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Ping An has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. The expansion has helped the organization to build new revenue stream and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets it operates in.
Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Ping An is investing huge resources in training and development of its employees resulting in a workforce that is not only highly skilled but also motivated to achieve more.
Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Ping An products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Ping An has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Ping An just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.

Weakness of Ping An – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Ping An can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where an organization can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

Limited success outside core business – Even though Ping An is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Ping An is spending above the industry average on Research and Development, it has not been able to compete with the leading players in the industry in terms of innovation. It has come across as a mature firm looking forward to bring out products based on tested features in the market.
There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market.
Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of Ping An
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Ping An has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Ping An needs to put more money in technology to integrate the processes across the board. Right now the investment in technologies is not at par with the vision of the company.

Opportunities for Ping An – External Strategic Factors

New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Ping An . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
Stable free cash flow provides opportunities to invest in adjacent product segments. With more cash in bank the company can invest in new technologies as well as in new products segments. This should open a window of opportunity for Ping An in other product categories.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Ping An to capture new customers and increase its market share.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Ping An an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
New customers from online channel – Over the past few years the company has invested vast sum of money into the online platform. This investment has opened new sales channel for Ping An. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Ping An’s products thus providing an opportunity to the company - either to boost its profitability or pass on the benefits to the customers to gain market share.
New environmental policies – The new opportunities will create a level playing field for all the players in the industry. It represent a great opportunity for Ping An to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.

Threats Ping An Facing - External Strategic Factors

Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Ping An
No regular supply of innovative products – Over the years the company has developed numerous products but those are often response to the development by other players. Secondly the supply of new products is not regular thus leading to high and low swings in the sales number over period of time.
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
As the company is operating in numerous countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in number of markets across the world.
Intense competition – Stable profitability has increased the number of players in the industry over last two years which has put downward pressure on not only profitability but also on overall sales.
Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Ping An

Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.

Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of Ping An
SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.

Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ping An

In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.

This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis Ping An managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.

Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of Ping An

This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.

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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

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SWOT Worksheet & Template

If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.

References / Citations & Bibliography

M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)