SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Hiday Hidaka Corp (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Hiday Hidaka Corp is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Hiday Hidaka Corp
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Hiday Hidaka Corp can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hiday Hidaka Corp, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hiday Hidaka 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 Hiday Hidaka Corp can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Hiday Hidaka Corp
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hiday Hidaka Corp
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Restaurants sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Hiday Hidaka Corp
Strengths of Hiday Hidaka Corp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hiday Hidaka Corp are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Hiday Hidaka 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Hiday Hidaka Corp is one of the leading players in the Restaurants 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 Hiday Hidaka Corp comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Restaurants 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
- Hiday Hidaka 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 Hiday Hidaka Corp is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Hiday Hidaka Corp emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Restaurants industry
– Hiday Hidaka Corp has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Hiday Hidaka Corp to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Restaurants industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Hiday Hidaka Corp to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Hiday Hidaka 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Restaurants industry
– Hiday Hidaka Corp is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Hiday Hidaka Corp has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Hiday Hidaka Corp staying ahead in the Restaurants industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Hiday Hidaka Corp has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Hiday Hidaka Corp to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Restaurants industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Hiday Hidaka Corp digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Hiday Hidaka Corp 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
– Hiday Hidaka Corp has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Restaurants industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Hiday Hidaka Corp have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Hiday Hidaka Corp in Restaurants industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Hiday Hidaka Corp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Hiday Hidaka Corp are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Hiday Hidaka Corp needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Restaurants industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Hiday Hidaka Corp can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Hiday Hidaka Corp is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Hiday Hidaka 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 Restaurants industry over the last five years. Hiday Hidaka 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Hiday Hidaka Corp products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Hiday Hidaka Corp needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Hiday Hidaka Corp is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Restaurants industry in last five years.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Hiday Hidaka 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Hiday Hidaka Corp is just above the Restaurants 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Hiday Hidaka 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Hiday Hidaka Corp, in the dynamic environment of Restaurants industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Hiday Hidaka Corp has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Hiday Hidaka 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 Restaurants industry using digital technology.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Restaurants industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Hiday Hidaka 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 Restaurants industry.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Hiday Hidaka Corp is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Hiday Hidaka Corp to provide better information regarding Restaurants products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Hiday Hidaka Corp Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Hiday Hidaka Corp are -
Loyalty marketing
– Hiday Hidaka Corp 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.
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 Hiday Hidaka Corp 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Hiday Hidaka Corp is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Hiday Hidaka Corp can utilize new technology in the field of Restaurants industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Hiday Hidaka Corp 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Hiday Hidaka Corp can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. Hiday Hidaka Corp can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Manufacturing automation
– Hiday Hidaka Corp can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Restaurants 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Hiday Hidaka 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Hiday Hidaka Corp has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Restaurants industry. This can help Hiday Hidaka Corp to build a more holistic ecosystem for Hiday Hidaka Corp products in the Restaurants 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 Restaurants industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Hiday Hidaka Corp can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Hiday Hidaka 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 Hiday Hidaka Corp to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Hiday Hidaka Corp has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Restaurants sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Hiday Hidaka Corp to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Hiday Hidaka Corp to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Hiday Hidaka Corp can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Hiday Hidaka Corp operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Restaurants sector.
Threats Hiday Hidaka Corp External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Hiday Hidaka Corp are -
Environmental challenges
– Hiday Hidaka 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. Hiday Hidaka Corp can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Restaurants industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Restaurants industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Hiday Hidaka Corp can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hiday Hidaka 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 Hiday Hidaka Corp prominent markets.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Hiday Hidaka Corp in Restaurants industry. The Restaurants 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.
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.
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 Hiday Hidaka Corp business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Hiday Hidaka Corp in the Restaurants sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Hiday Hidaka Corp is facing in Restaurants sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Hiday Hidaka Corp needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Restaurants industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Hiday Hidaka 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 Hiday Hidaka Corp.
Regulatory challenges
– Hiday Hidaka 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 Restaurants industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Hiday Hidaka 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 Restaurants industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Hiday Hidaka Corp Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Hiday Hidaka 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 Hiday Hidaka 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 Hiday Hidaka 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 Hiday Hidaka 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 Hiday Hidaka Corp needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.