Mizuho Medy Co Ltd (4595) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Biotechnology & Drugs
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Mizuho Medy Co Ltd (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Mizuho Medy Co Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, technology disruption,
increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Mizuho Medy Co Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mizuho Medy Co Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mizuho Medy 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 Mizuho Medy Co Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Biotechnology & Drugs sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd
Strengths of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– Mizuho Medy Co Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Mizuho Medy Co Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Mizuho Medy Co Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Mizuho Medy Co Ltd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Mizuho Medy Co Ltd 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Mizuho Medy 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Mizuho Medy Co Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Mizuho Medy Co Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Mizuho Medy Co Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
Ability to lead change in Biotechnology & Drugs
– Mizuho Medy Co Ltd is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Mizuho Medy Co Ltd in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– Mizuho Medy Co Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Mizuho Medy Co Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Mizuho Medy Co Ltd 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 Mizuho Medy Co Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Mizuho Medy Co Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Mizuho Medy Co Ltd has one of the best training and development program in Healthcare 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.
Analytics focus
– Mizuho Medy 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 Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Mizuho Medy 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd are -
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 Mizuho Medy Co Ltd supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Mizuho Medy Co Ltd is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Mizuho Medy Co Ltd vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Mizuho Medy 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry using digital technology.
Employees’ less understanding of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd 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.
High dependence on Mizuho Medy Co Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Biotechnology & Drugs industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Mizuho Medy Co Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Mizuho Medy Co Ltd is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in last five years.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Biotechnology & Drugs industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Mizuho Medy Co Ltd has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry over the last five years. Mizuho Medy Co Ltd 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Mizuho Medy Co Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Biotechnology & Drugs industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Mizuho Medy Co Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Mizuho Medy Co Ltd needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Mizuho Medy Co Ltd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Mizuho Medy Co Ltd is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd is just above the Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Mizuho Medy Co Ltd 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Mizuho Medy Co Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd are -
Loyalty marketing
– Mizuho Medy 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Mizuho Medy Co Ltd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Biotechnology & Drugs sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Mizuho Medy Co Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Mizuho Medy Co Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Mizuho Medy Co Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Mizuho Medy Co Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Mizuho Medy 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. Mizuho Medy 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Mizuho Medy Co Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Mizuho Medy 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Mizuho Medy 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Mizuho Medy Co Ltd in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. Now Mizuho Medy Co Ltd can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Mizuho Medy 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
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 Mizuho Medy Co Ltd 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Biotechnology & Drugs industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Mizuho Medy Co Ltd can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Mizuho Medy 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 Mizuho Medy Co Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Mizuho Medy 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.
Threats Mizuho Medy Co Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Mizuho Medy 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry regulations.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Biotechnology & Drugs industry are lowering. It can presents Mizuho Medy Co Ltd with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
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 Mizuho Medy Co Ltd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd.
Environmental challenges
– Mizuho Medy 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. Mizuho Medy Co Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Mizuho Medy 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 Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Mizuho Medy Co Ltd 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry and other sectors.
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. Mizuho Medy 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.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Mizuho Medy Co Ltd in the Biotechnology & Drugs sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Mizuho Medy 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 Mizuho Medy Co Ltd prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Mizuho Medy 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Mizuho Medy Co Ltd in Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Mizuho Medy Co Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Mizuho Medy 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 Mizuho Medy 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 Mizuho Medy 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 Mizuho Medy 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 Mizuho Medy Co Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.