Arshiya (ARSH) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Trucking
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Arshiya (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Arshiya is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing energy prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing commodity prices, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Arshiya can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Arshiya, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Arshiya 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 Arshiya can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Arshiya
2. Improving business portfolio management of Arshiya
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Trucking sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Arshiya
Strengths of Arshiya | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Arshiya are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Arshiya has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Arshiya 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Arshiya has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Trucking industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Arshiya have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Trucking industry
– Arshiya has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Arshiya to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Trucking industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Arshiya to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Arshiya is present in almost all the verticals within the Trucking industry. This has provided Arshiya 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Arshiya 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Arshiya comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Trucking 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Arshiya 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Arshiya is one of the most innovative firm in Trucking sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Arshiya has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Arshiya staying ahead in the Trucking industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Arshiya is one of the leading players in the Trucking industry in India. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in India. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Analytics focus
– Arshiya 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 Trucking industry. The technology infrastructure of India 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.
Organizational Resilience of Arshiya
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Arshiya does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses of Arshiya | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Arshiya are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Arshiya needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Trucking industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Arshiya can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Arshiya is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Arshiya has some of the most successful models in the Trucking industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Arshiya should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
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 Arshiya supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Arshiya is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Arshiya vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Arshiya has high operating costs in the Trucking industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Arshiya lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring in Trucking industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Arshiya 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Arshiya, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Trucking 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Arshiya has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Trucking industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Need for greater diversity
– Arshiya 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Arshiya is just above the Trucking 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Arshiya is one of the leading players in the Trucking industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Trucking industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Arshiya, in the dynamic environment of Trucking industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Arshiya has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Arshiya Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Arshiya are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Arshiya has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Trucking sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Arshiya to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Arshiya to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Arshiya 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 Arshiya to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Arshiya can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Trucking industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Arshiya 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. Arshiya 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Arshiya can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Trucking 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Arshiya 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.
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 Arshiya 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Arshiya 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.
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. Arshiya can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Arshiya in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Trucking industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Arshiya 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 Arshiya to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Trucking industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Arshiya in the Trucking industry. Now Arshiya can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Arshiya 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.
Threats Arshiya External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Arshiya are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Trucking industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Arshiya can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Arshiya 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Arshiya 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 Trucking industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of Arshiya
– 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 Arshiya.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Arshiya 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 Arshiya prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Arshiya is facing in Trucking 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, Arshiya may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Trucking sector.
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 Arshiya.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Arshiya 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. Arshiya can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Trucking industry.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Regulatory challenges
– Arshiya 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 Trucking industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Arshiya in Trucking industry. The Trucking 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Arshiya Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Arshiya 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 Arshiya 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 Arshiya 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 Arshiya 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 Arshiya needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.