SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Heiwa Corp (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Heiwa Corp is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, technology disruption, geopolitical disruptions,
there is backlash against globalization, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Heiwa Corp can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Heiwa Corp, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Heiwa Corp
2. Improving business portfolio management of Heiwa Corp
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Casinos & Gaming sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Heiwa Corp
Strengths of Heiwa Corp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Heiwa Corp are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Heiwa Corp has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Heiwa Corp staying ahead in the Casinos & Gaming industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Heiwa Corp 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.
Learning organization
- Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Heiwa Corp emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Heiwa Corp
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Heiwa Corp does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Heiwa Corp has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Heiwa Corp to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Casinos & Gaming
– Heiwa Corp is one of the leading players in the Casinos & Gaming industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Casinos & Gaming industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Heiwa Corp in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Heiwa Corp in Casinos & Gaming industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Heiwa Corp in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Heiwa Corp has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Heiwa Corp to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Heiwa Corp comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Casinos & Gaming 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Heiwa Corp has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Casinos & Gaming industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Heiwa Corp have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Heiwa Corp has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Heiwa Corp 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Heiwa Corp 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.
Weaknesses of Heiwa Corp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Heiwa Corp are -
Employees’ less understanding of Heiwa Corp strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Heiwa Corp 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Heiwa Corp 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Heiwa Corp has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Heiwa Corp, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Casinos & Gaming 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Heiwa Corp needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Casinos & Gaming industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Heiwa Corp can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Heiwa Corp is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Heiwa Corp 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 Casinos & Gaming industry using digital technology.
High dependence on Heiwa Corp ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Heiwa Corp still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Casinos & Gaming industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Heiwa Corp has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Heiwa Corp has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Casinos & Gaming industry over the last five years. Heiwa Corp 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Heiwa Corp is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Casinos & Gaming industry, but Heiwa Corp needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Heiwa Corp to focus more on services in the Casinos & Gaming industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Heiwa Corp is just above the Casinos & Gaming 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Casinos & Gaming industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Heiwa Corp 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 Casinos & Gaming industry.
Heiwa Corp Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Heiwa Corp are -
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. Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Casinos & Gaming industry. This can help Heiwa Corp to build a more holistic ecosystem for Heiwa Corp products in the Casinos & Gaming industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Casinos & Gaming industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Heiwa Corp can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Manufacturing automation
– Heiwa Corp can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Casinos & Gaming sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Casinos & Gaming industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Heiwa Corp 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. Heiwa Corp 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Heiwa Corp can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Casinos & Gaming 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Heiwa Corp can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Heiwa Corp operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Casinos & Gaming sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Heiwa Corp 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Heiwa Corp to increase its market reach. Heiwa Corp 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.
Threats Heiwa Corp External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Heiwa Corp are -
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. Heiwa Corp needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Casinos & Gaming industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
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 Heiwa Corp in the Casinos & Gaming sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Heiwa Corp
– 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 Heiwa Corp.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Casinos & Gaming industry are lowering. It can presents Heiwa Corp with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Casinos & Gaming sector.
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. Heiwa Corp 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Heiwa Corp 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 Casinos & Gaming industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Heiwa Corp in Casinos & Gaming industry. The Casinos & Gaming 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Heiwa Corp may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Casinos & Gaming sector.
Environmental challenges
– Heiwa Corp 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. Heiwa Corp can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Casinos & Gaming industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Heiwa Corp has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Casinos & Gaming industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Heiwa Corp needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Casinos & Gaming 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Heiwa Corp 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 Casinos & Gaming industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Heiwa Corp Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp 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 Heiwa Corp needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
