SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Itoham Yonekyu (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Itoham Yonekyu is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Itoham Yonekyu can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Itoham Yonekyu, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Itoham Yonekyu 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 Itoham Yonekyu can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Itoham Yonekyu
2. Improving business portfolio management of Itoham Yonekyu
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Itoham Yonekyu
Strengths of Itoham Yonekyu | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Itoham Yonekyu are -
Organizational Resilience of Itoham Yonekyu
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Itoham Yonekyu 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 Itoham Yonekyu in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Itoham Yonekyu has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Itoham Yonekyu to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Itoham Yonekyu comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Food Processing 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Itoham Yonekyu is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry
– Itoham Yonekyu has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Itoham Yonekyu to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Itoham Yonekyu to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Itoham Yonekyu digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Itoham Yonekyu has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Itoham Yonekyu is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in Japan. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Japan. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Itoham Yonekyu has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Food Processing industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Itoham Yonekyu have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Itoham Yonekyu has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Itoham Yonekyu to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Itoham Yonekyu is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Itoham Yonekyu is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of Itoham Yonekyu | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Itoham Yonekyu are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Itoham Yonekyu has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Food Processing industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Itoham Yonekyu 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 Food Processing industry using digital technology.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Itoham Yonekyu 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 Food Processing industry.
Need for greater diversity
– Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Itoham Yonekyu is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Itoham Yonekyu needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Itoham Yonekyu to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Itoham Yonekyu, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Food Processing 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Itoham Yonekyu has some of the most successful models in the Food Processing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Itoham Yonekyu should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ less understanding of Itoham Yonekyu strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Itoham Yonekyu needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Food Processing industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Itoham Yonekyu can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Itoham Yonekyu is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Food Processing industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Itoham Yonekyu Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Itoham Yonekyu are -
Loyalty marketing
– Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Itoham Yonekyu 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 Itoham Yonekyu to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Itoham Yonekyu 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 Itoham Yonekyu to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Itoham Yonekyu 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.
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 Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Itoham Yonekyu has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Itoham Yonekyu to build a more holistic ecosystem for Itoham Yonekyu products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Itoham Yonekyu can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Itoham Yonekyu is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Itoham Yonekyu can utilize new technology in the field of Food Processing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Itoham Yonekyu 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. Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Itoham Yonekyu can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Food Processing industry.
Developing new processes and practices
– Itoham Yonekyu can develop new processes and procedures in Food Processing 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Itoham Yonekyu 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.
Threats Itoham Yonekyu External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Itoham Yonekyu are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Itoham Yonekyu 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 Food Processing industry.
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 Itoham Yonekyu in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Itoham Yonekyu with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing sector.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Itoham Yonekyu
– 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 Itoham Yonekyu.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Food Processing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Itoham Yonekyu can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Regulatory challenges
– Itoham Yonekyu 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 Food Processing industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Itoham Yonekyu 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 Itoham Yonekyu prominent markets.
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. Itoham Yonekyu 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.
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. Itoham Yonekyu needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Itoham Yonekyu may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Food Processing 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 Itoham Yonekyu.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Itoham Yonekyu Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Itoham Yonekyu 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 Itoham Yonekyu 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 Itoham Yonekyu 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 Itoham Yonekyu 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 Itoham Yonekyu needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.