SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Shibusawa Warehouse (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Shibusawa Warehouse 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%, wage bills are increasing, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, geopolitical disruptions, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Shibusawa Warehouse
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Shibusawa Warehouse can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Shibusawa Warehouse, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Shibusawa Warehouse can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Shibusawa Warehouse
2. Improving business portfolio management of Shibusawa Warehouse
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Trucking sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Shibusawa Warehouse
Strengths of Shibusawa Warehouse | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Shibusawa Warehouse are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Shibusawa Warehouse in Trucking 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 Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Shibusawa Warehouse has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Shibusawa Warehouse staying ahead in the Trucking industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Shibusawa Warehouse
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Shibusawa Warehouse does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Shibusawa Warehouse has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Trucking industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Shibusawa Warehouse have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Shibusawa Warehouse comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Trucking 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Shibusawa Warehouse has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Trucking industry
– Shibusawa Warehouse is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Diverse revenue streams
– Shibusawa Warehouse is present in almost all the verticals within the Trucking industry. This has provided Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Training and development
– Shibusawa Warehouse has one of the best training and development program in Transportation 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
– Shibusawa Warehouse is one of the leading players in the Trucking 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.
Weaknesses of Shibusawa Warehouse | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Shibusawa Warehouse are -
High dependence on Shibusawa Warehouse ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Shibusawa Warehouse still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Trucking industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Shibusawa Warehouse has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Shibusawa Warehouse has some of the most successful models in the Trucking industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Shibusawa Warehouse should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Shibusawa Warehouse is just above the Trucking industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Shibusawa Warehouse needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Trucking industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Shibusawa Warehouse can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Shibusawa Warehouse is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Shibusawa Warehouse is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Shibusawa Warehouse to provide better information regarding Trucking products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Trucking industry using digital technology.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Shibusawa Warehouse needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Shibusawa Warehouse is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Trucking industry, but Shibusawa Warehouse needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Shibusawa Warehouse to focus more on services in the Trucking industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Need for greater diversity
– Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Shibusawa Warehouse has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Trucking industry over the last five years. Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Skills based hiring in Trucking industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Shibusawa Warehouse Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Shibusawa Warehouse are -
Loyalty marketing
– Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Trucking industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Shibusawa Warehouse in the Trucking industry. Now Shibusawa Warehouse can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Shibusawa Warehouse has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Trucking industry. This can help Shibusawa Warehouse to build a more holistic ecosystem for Shibusawa Warehouse products in the Trucking industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Shibusawa Warehouse can develop new processes and procedures in Trucking 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Shibusawa Warehouse can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Shibusawa Warehouse has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Trucking sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Shibusawa Warehouse to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Shibusawa Warehouse in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Trucking 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 Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Shibusawa Warehouse to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Shibusawa Warehouse can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Trucking industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Shibusawa Warehouse 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. Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Shibusawa Warehouse can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Trucking 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.
Threats Shibusawa Warehouse External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Shibusawa Warehouse are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Trucking industry and other sectors.
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, Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Shibusawa Warehouse prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of Shibusawa Warehouse
– 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 Shibusawa Warehouse.
Environmental challenges
– Shibusawa Warehouse 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. Shibusawa Warehouse can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Trucking industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Shibusawa Warehouse 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Trucking industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Shibusawa Warehouse has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Trucking industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Shibusawa Warehouse needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Trucking 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Trucking industry regulations.
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 Shibusawa Warehouse.
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 Shibusawa Warehouse business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Trucking industry are lowering. It can presents Shibusawa Warehouse with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Trucking sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Shibusawa Warehouse Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Shibusawa Warehouse 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 Shibusawa Warehouse needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.