SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing energy prices, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Misc. Capital Goods sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift
Strengths of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift are -
Analytics focus
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Organizational Resilience of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Misc. Capital Goods industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Misc. Capital Goods industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Capital Goods sector.
Diverse revenue streams
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Capital Goods industry. This has provided Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is one of the leading players in the Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Learning organization
- Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift in Misc. Capital Goods industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift are -
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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Employees’ less understanding of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is just above the Misc. Capital Goods 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 harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift to provide better information regarding Misc. Capital Goods products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift, in the dynamic environment of Misc. Capital Goods industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Lack of clear differentiation of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, but Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift to focus more on services in the Misc. Capital Goods industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Misc. Capital Goods industry over the last five years. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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.
Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Misc. Capital Goods industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift to increase its market reach. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Misc. Capital Goods industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Misc. Capital Goods sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Capital Goods industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Capital Goods industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift.
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. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Misc. Capital Goods 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
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Capital Goods industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Capital Goods industry are lowering. It can presents Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Misc. Capital Goods sector.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift in Misc. Capital Goods industry. The Misc. Capital Goods 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift prominent markets.
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. Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Capital Goods industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift in the Misc. Capital Goods sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift 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 Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
