Highlands Pacific Limited SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Highlands Pacific Limited is one of the leading companies in its industry. Highlands Pacific Limited maintains its dominant position in market by critically 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.

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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 enables the managers of the Highlands Pacific Limited to develop four types of strategies:

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

Highlands Pacific Limited swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The primary purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Highlands Pacific Limited strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Highlands Pacific Limited SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Highlands Pacific Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, Highlands Pacific Limited 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 Highlands Pacific Limited are –

Read - Highlands Pacific Limited Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Highlands Pacific Limited has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Highlands Pacific Limited just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Highlands Pacific Limited 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.
Strong distribution network – Over the years Highlands Pacific Limited has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Highlands Pacific Limited is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Highlands Pacific Limited 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.
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.
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.

Weakness of Highlands Pacific Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Highlands Pacific Limited can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a company can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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The company has not being able to tackle the challenges present by the new entrants in the segment and has lost small market share in the niche categories. Highlands Pacific Limited has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
Financial planning is not done properly and efficiently. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios suggest that the company can use the cash more efficiently than what it is doing at present.
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 Highlands Pacific Limited
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Highlands Pacific Limited is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Highlands Pacific Limited are below the industry average.
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Highlands Pacific Limited has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.

Opportunities for Highlands Pacific Limited – External Strategic Factors

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Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Highlands Pacific Limited an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
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 Highlands Pacific Limited in other product categories.
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 Highlands Pacific Limited to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
The new technology provides an opportunity to Highlands Pacific Limited to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. It will enable the firm to maintain its loyal customers with great service and lure new customers through other value oriented propositions.
Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Highlands Pacific Limited.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Highlands Pacific Limited products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
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 Highlands Pacific Limited. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
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 Highlands Pacific Limited Facing - External Strategic Factors

Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Highlands Pacific Limited 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.
New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Highlands Pacific Limited
Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Highlands Pacific Limited’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
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.
The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Highlands Pacific Limited

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 Highlands Pacific Limited
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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Highlands Pacific Limited

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 Highlands Pacific Limited 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 Highlands Pacific Limited

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

You can email us to get an example document of Weighted SWOT analysis.

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)