SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Anicom Holdings Inc (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Anicom Holdings Inc 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%, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, technology disruption, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Anicom Holdings Inc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Anicom Holdings Inc can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Anicom Holdings Inc, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Anicom Holdings Inc can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Anicom Holdings Inc
2. Improving business portfolio management of Anicom Holdings Inc
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Anicom Holdings Inc
Strengths of Anicom Holdings Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Anicom Holdings Inc are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Anicom Holdings Inc is present in almost all the verticals within the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry. This has provided Anicom Holdings Inc 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Anicom Holdings Inc is one of the most innovative firm in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) sector.
Ability to lead change in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty)
– Anicom Holdings Inc is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Anicom Holdings Inc in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Anicom Holdings Inc has one of the best training and development program in Financial 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Anicom Holdings Inc is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) 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 Anicom Holdings Inc
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Anicom Holdings Inc does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Anicom Holdings Inc digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Anicom Holdings Inc 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
– Anicom Holdings Inc has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Anicom Holdings Inc have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry
– Anicom Holdings Inc has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Anicom Holdings Inc to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Anicom Holdings Inc to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High brand equity
– Anicom Holdings Inc has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Anicom Holdings Inc to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Anicom Holdings Inc 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Anicom Holdings Inc has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Anicom Holdings Inc staying ahead in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Anicom Holdings Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Anicom Holdings Inc are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry using digital technology.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Anicom Holdings Inc, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Anicom Holdings Inc is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Anicom Holdings Inc to provide better information regarding Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry.
High dependence on Anicom Holdings Inc ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Anicom Holdings Inc still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Anicom Holdings Inc has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ less understanding of Anicom Holdings Inc strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Anicom Holdings Inc 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Anicom Holdings Inc products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Anicom Holdings Inc needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Anicom Holdings Inc is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry in last five years.
Need for greater diversity
– Anicom Holdings Inc 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 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 Anicom Holdings Inc supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Anicom Holdings Inc is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Anicom Holdings Inc vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Anicom Holdings Inc needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Anicom Holdings Inc Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Anicom Holdings Inc are -
Buying journey improvements
– Anicom Holdings Inc can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Anicom Holdings Inc has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry. This can help Anicom Holdings Inc to build a more holistic ecosystem for Anicom Holdings Inc products in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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 Anicom Holdings Inc 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Anicom Holdings Inc to increase its market reach. Anicom Holdings Inc 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Anicom Holdings Inc 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Anicom Holdings Inc 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Anicom Holdings Inc 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Anicom Holdings Inc in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Anicom Holdings Inc in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry. Now Anicom Holdings Inc can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Anicom Holdings Inc has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Anicom Holdings Inc to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Anicom Holdings Inc to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Anicom Holdings Inc 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.
Threats Anicom Holdings Inc External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Anicom Holdings Inc are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Anicom Holdings Inc can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Anicom Holdings Inc prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry.
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. Anicom Holdings Inc 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 wage structure of Anicom Holdings Inc
– 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 Anicom Holdings Inc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Anicom Holdings Inc high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry are lowering. It can presents Anicom Holdings Inc with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Anicom Holdings Inc is facing in Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Anicom Holdings Inc.
Environmental challenges
– Anicom Holdings Inc 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. Anicom Holdings Inc can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry.
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 Anicom Holdings Inc business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Anicom Holdings Inc Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Anicom Holdings Inc 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 Anicom Holdings Inc needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.