Tsukishima Kikai (6332) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Tsukishima Kikai (Japan)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Tsukishima Kikai is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing, increasing commodity prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Tsukishima Kikai

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Tsukishima Kikai can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Tsukishima Kikai, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Tsukishima Kikai 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Tsukishima Kikai can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Tsukishima Kikai
2. Improving business portfolio management of Tsukishima Kikai
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 Tsukishima Kikai

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Strengths of Tsukishima Kikai | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Tsukishima Kikai are -

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Innovation driven organization

– Tsukishima Kikai is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Capital Goods sector.

High brand equity

– Tsukishima Kikai has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Tsukishima Kikai to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Tsukishima Kikai has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Tsukishima Kikai has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.

Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Capital Goods industry

– Tsukishima Kikai is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Capital Goods industry

– Tsukishima Kikai has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Tsukishima Kikai to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Tsukishima Kikai to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Tsukishima Kikai in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Tsukishima Kikai has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Tsukishima Kikai to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Learning organization

- Tsukishima Kikai 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 Tsukishima Kikai is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Tsukishima Kikai emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Tsukishima Kikai 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 Tsukishima Kikai have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Training and development

– Tsukishima Kikai has one of the best training and development program in Capital Goods 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Tsukishima Kikai has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Tsukishima Kikai staying ahead in the Misc. Capital Goods industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

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Weaknesses of Tsukishima Kikai | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Tsukishima Kikai are -

Skills based hiring in Misc. Capital Goods industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Tsukishima Kikai needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Misc. Capital Goods industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Tsukishima Kikai can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Tsukishima Kikai is planning to shift buying processes online.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Tsukishima Kikai is one of the leading players in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Misc. Capital Goods industry in last five years.

Employees’ less understanding of Tsukishima Kikai strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Tsukishima Kikai 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry using digital technology.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Tsukishima Kikai is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, but Tsukishima Kikai needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Tsukishima Kikai to focus more on services in the Misc. Capital Goods industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Tsukishima Kikai has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

Need for greater diversity

– Tsukishima Kikai 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Misc. Capital Goods industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Tsukishima Kikai 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 Misc. Capital Goods industry.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Tsukishima Kikai 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. Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Misc. Capital Goods industry, Tsukishima Kikai 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.

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Tsukishima Kikai Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Tsukishima Kikai are -

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. Tsukishima Kikai 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. Tsukishima Kikai 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.

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. Tsukishima Kikai can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Tsukishima Kikai 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.

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 Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Tsukishima Kikai has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Misc. Capital Goods sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Tsukishima Kikai to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Tsukishima Kikai to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Loyalty marketing

– Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Tsukishima Kikai to increase its market reach. Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Tsukishima Kikai can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Misc. Capital Goods 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Tsukishima Kikai can develop new processes and procedures in Misc. Capital Goods industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Tsukishima Kikai has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Capital Goods industry. This can help Tsukishima Kikai to build a more holistic ecosystem for Tsukishima Kikai products in the Misc. Capital Goods industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

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Threats Tsukishima Kikai External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Tsukishima Kikai are -

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, Tsukishima Kikai 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 Tsukishima Kikai 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 Tsukishima Kikai business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Tsukishima Kikai 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.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Tsukishima Kikai 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.

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. Tsukishima Kikai needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Capital Goods industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Tsukishima Kikai has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Capital Goods industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Tsukishima Kikai 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.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Tsukishima Kikai may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Capital Goods sector.

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. Tsukishima Kikai can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Tsukishima Kikai 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

– Tsukishima Kikai 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. Tsukishima Kikai can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Capital Goods 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. Tsukishima Kikai 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Tsukishima Kikai Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Tsukishima Kikai 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 Tsukishima Kikai 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 Tsukishima Kikai 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 Tsukishima Kikai 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 Tsukishima Kikai needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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