Sakai Moving Service (9039) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Trucking
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Sakai Moving Service (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Sakai Moving Service is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Sakai Moving Service
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Sakai Moving Service can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sakai Moving Service, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Sakai Moving Service
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sakai Moving Service
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Trucking sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Sakai Moving Service
Strengths of Sakai Moving Service | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sakai Moving Service are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Trucking industry
– Sakai Moving Service has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Sakai Moving Service to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Trucking industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Sakai Moving Service to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Sakai Moving Service 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 Japan 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.
High brand equity
– Sakai Moving Service has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Sakai Moving Service to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Sakai Moving Service has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Sakai Moving Service 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Sakai Moving Service 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
– Sakai Moving Service is present in almost all the verticals within the Trucking industry. This has provided Sakai Moving Service 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Sakai Moving Service in the Transportation sector have low bargaining power. Sakai Moving Service has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Sakai Moving Service to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Sakai Moving Service is one of the leading players in the Trucking 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.
Organizational Resilience of Sakai Moving Service
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Sakai Moving Service does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management in the Trucking industry
– Sakai Moving Service is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Training and development
– Sakai Moving Service has one of the best training and development program in Transportation industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Sakai Moving Service 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.
Weaknesses of Sakai Moving Service | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Sakai Moving Service are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Sakai Moving Service 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Sakai Moving Service 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.
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 Sakai Moving Service supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Sakai Moving Service is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Sakai Moving Service vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Sakai Moving Service 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Sakai Moving Service 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.
High dependence on Sakai Moving Service ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Sakai Moving Service still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Trucking industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Sakai Moving Service has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Sakai Moving Service is planning to shift buying processes online.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Sakai Moving Service, 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Sakai Moving Service 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 Trucking industry using digital technology.
Skills based hiring in Trucking industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Sakai Moving Service 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Sakai Moving Service 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. Sakai Moving Service should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Sakai Moving Service Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Sakai Moving Service 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. Sakai Moving Service can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Buying journey improvements
– Sakai Moving Service 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.
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. Sakai Moving Service 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. Sakai Moving Service 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.
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 Sakai Moving Service 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Sakai Moving Service can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Sakai Moving Service 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Sakai Moving Service to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Sakai Moving Service to increase its market reach. Sakai Moving Service 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Sakai Moving Service 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Sakai Moving Service can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Sakai Moving Service operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Trucking sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Sakai Moving Service 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Sakai Moving Service External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Sakai Moving Service are -
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 Sakai Moving Service in the Trucking sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Sakai Moving Service
– 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 Sakai Moving Service.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Sakai Moving Service 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Sakai Moving Service has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Trucking industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Sakai Moving Service needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Trucking 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.
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.
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. Sakai Moving Service needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Trucking industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Sakai Moving Service 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service prominent markets.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Sakai Moving Service business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Sakai Moving Service 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, Sakai Moving Service 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.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Sakai Moving Service 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 Trucking industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sakai Moving Service Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service 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 Sakai Moving Service needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.