Tamron Co Ltd (7740) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Scientific & Technical Instr.
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Tamron Co Ltd (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Tamron Co Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Tamron Co Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Tamron Co Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Tamron Co Ltd 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 Tamron Co Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Tamron Co Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Tamron Co Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Scientific & Technical Instr. sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Tamron Co Ltd
Strengths of Tamron Co Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Tamron Co Ltd are -
Analytics focus
– Tamron Co Ltd 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Tamron Co Ltd comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Tamron Co Ltd in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Tamron Co Ltd 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.
Organizational Resilience of Tamron Co Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Tamron Co Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Tamron Co Ltd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Tamron Co Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Tamron Co Ltd 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)
– Tamron Co Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Tamron Co Ltd staying ahead in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Tamron Co Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Tamron Co Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Tamron Co Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Tamron Co Ltd 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.
Training and development
– Tamron Co Ltd has one of the best training and development program in Technology 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
– Tamron Co Ltd is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of Tamron Co Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Tamron Co Ltd are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Tamron Co Ltd, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry, Tamron Co Ltd 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Tamron Co Ltd has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Tamron Co Ltd needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Tamron Co Ltd 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry using digital technology.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Tamron Co Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Scientific & Technical Instr. industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Tamron Co Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Tamron Co Ltd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry, but Tamron Co Ltd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Tamron Co Ltd to focus more on services in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Tamron Co Ltd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Tamron Co Ltd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Tamron Co Ltd needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Tamron Co Ltd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Tamron Co Ltd is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Tamron Co Ltd has high operating costs in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Tamron Co Ltd lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Tamron Co Ltd is one of the leading players in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry in last five years.
Tamron Co Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Tamron Co Ltd are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Tamron Co Ltd 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Tamron Co Ltd 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. Tamron Co Ltd 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Tamron Co Ltd to increase its market reach. Tamron Co Ltd 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 Tamron Co Ltd 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Tamron Co Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Tamron Co Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Scientific & Technical Instr. industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Tamron Co Ltd 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Tamron Co Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Tamron Co Ltd 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Tamron Co Ltd can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Tamron Co Ltd to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Tamron Co Ltd 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Tamron Co Ltd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Tamron Co Ltd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Tamron Co Ltd 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 Tamron Co Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Tamron Co Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Tamron Co Ltd are -
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. Tamron Co Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Tamron Co Ltd 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry.
Environmental challenges
– Tamron Co Ltd 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. Tamron Co Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Tamron Co Ltd is facing in Scientific & Technical Instr. sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Tamron Co Ltd
– 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 Tamron Co Ltd.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Tamron Co Ltd may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Scientific & Technical Instr. sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Tamron Co Ltd 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Tamron Co Ltd in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. The Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Tamron Co Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Tamron Co Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Tamron Co Ltd 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry regulations.
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. Tamron Co Ltd 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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Tamron Co Ltd 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 Tamron Co Ltd prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Tamron Co Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Tamron Co Ltd 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 Tamron Co Ltd 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 Tamron Co Ltd 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 Tamron Co Ltd 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 Tamron Co Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.