Bando Chemical Industries (5195) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Fabricated Plastic & Rubber
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Bando Chemical Industries (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Bando Chemical Industries is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
technology disruption, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Bando Chemical Industries
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Bando Chemical Industries can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Bando Chemical Industries, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Bando Chemical Industries 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 Bando Chemical Industries can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Bando Chemical Industries
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bando Chemical Industries
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Bando Chemical Industries
Strengths of Bando Chemical Industries | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Bando Chemical Industries are -
Training and development
– Bando Chemical Industries has one of the best training and development program in Basic Materials industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Bando Chemical Industries 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.
Learning organization
- Bando Chemical Industries 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 Bando Chemical Industries is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Bando Chemical Industries emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Bando Chemical Industries has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Bando Chemical Industries have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Bando Chemical Industries is one of the most innovative firm in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector.
Ability to lead change in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber
– Bando Chemical Industries is one of the leading players in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Bando Chemical Industries in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Bando Chemical Industries has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Bando Chemical Industries 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Bando Chemical Industries in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Bando Chemical Industries has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Bando Chemical Industries to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Bando Chemical Industries 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 Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry
– Bando Chemical Industries has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Bando Chemical Industries to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Bando Chemical Industries to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High brand equity
– Bando Chemical Industries has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Bando Chemical Industries to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Bando Chemical Industries in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Bando Chemical Industries | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Bando Chemical Industries are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Bando Chemical Industries needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Bando Chemical Industries has high operating costs in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Bando Chemical Industries lucrative customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Bando Chemical Industries has some of the most successful models in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Bando Chemical Industries should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Bando Chemical Industries is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry, but Bando Chemical Industries needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Bando Chemical Industries to focus more on services in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
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 Bando Chemical Industries supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Bando Chemical Industries is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Bando Chemical Industries vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Bando Chemical Industries has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Bando Chemical Industries is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Bando Chemical Industries to provide better information regarding Fabricated Plastic & Rubber products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Bando Chemical Industries needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Bando Chemical Industries can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Bando Chemical Industries is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on Bando Chemical Industries ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Bando Chemical Industries still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Bando Chemical Industries has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Bando Chemical Industries, in the dynamic environment of Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Bando Chemical Industries has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Bando Chemical Industries 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.
Bando Chemical Industries Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Bando Chemical Industries are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Bando Chemical Industries has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Bando Chemical Industries to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Bando Chemical Industries to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Bando Chemical Industries can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Bando Chemical Industries 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 Bando Chemical Industries in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Bando Chemical Industries can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Bando Chemical Industries 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Bando Chemical Industries is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Bando Chemical Industries can utilize new technology in the field of Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, 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, Bando Chemical Industries can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Bando Chemical Industries operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Bando Chemical Industries can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Bando Chemical Industries 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 Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry.
Manufacturing automation
– Bando Chemical Industries can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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.
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. Bando Chemical Industries can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– Bando Chemical Industries 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.
Threats Bando Chemical Industries External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Bando Chemical Industries are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Bando Chemical Industries 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Bando Chemical Industries 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 Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry and other sectors.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Bando Chemical Industries can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Bando Chemical Industries 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.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Bando Chemical Industries 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 Bando Chemical Industries 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. Bando Chemical Industries needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Bando Chemical Industries
– 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 Bando Chemical Industries.
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 Bando Chemical Industries.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Bando Chemical Industries may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Bando Chemical Industries in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. The Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Bando Chemical Industries is facing in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Bando Chemical Industries has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Bando Chemical Industries needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bando Chemical Industries Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Bando Chemical Industries 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 Bando Chemical Industries 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 Bando Chemical Industries 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 Bando Chemical Industries 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 Bando Chemical Industries needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.