Joban Kosan Co Ltd (9675) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Coal
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Joban Kosan Co Ltd (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Joban Kosan Co Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, increasing energy prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Joban Kosan Co Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Joban Kosan Co Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Joban Kosan Co Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Joban Kosan 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 Joban Kosan Co Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Joban Kosan Co Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Joban Kosan Co Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Coal sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Joban Kosan Co Ltd
Strengths of Joban Kosan Co Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Joban Kosan Co Ltd are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Joban Kosan Co Ltd is present in almost all the verticals within the Coal industry. This has provided Joban Kosan Co Ltd 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.
Organizational Resilience of Joban Kosan Co Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Joban Kosan Co Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Joban Kosan Co Ltd has one of the best training and development program in Energy 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Joban Kosan Co Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Coal sector.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Joban Kosan 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Joban Kosan Co Ltd comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Coal 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 Joban Kosan Co Ltd in Coal industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Joban Kosan 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 Joban Kosan Co Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Joban Kosan Co Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Coal industry
– Joban Kosan Co Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Joban Kosan Co Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Coal industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Joban Kosan Co Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Coal industry
– Joban Kosan 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Joban Kosan 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 Coal industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Joban Kosan Co Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Joban Kosan 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 Coal 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.
Weaknesses of Joban Kosan Co Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Joban Kosan Co Ltd are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Joban Kosan Co Ltd has high operating costs in the Coal industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Joban Kosan Co Ltd lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Joban Kosan Co Ltd needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Coal industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Joban Kosan Co Ltd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Joban Kosan Co Ltd is planning to shift buying processes online.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Joban Kosan Co Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Coal industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Joban Kosan Co Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Employees’ less understanding of Joban Kosan Co Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Joban Kosan 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Joban Kosan Co Ltd needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on Joban Kosan Co Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Joban Kosan Co Ltd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Coal industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Joban Kosan Co Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Joban Kosan Co Ltd is one of the leading players in the Coal industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Coal industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring in Coal industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Joban Kosan Co Ltd 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Joban Kosan Co Ltd has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Coal industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Coal industry, Joban Kosan 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Joban Kosan Co Ltd is just above the Coal 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.
Joban Kosan Co Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Joban Kosan Co Ltd are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Joban Kosan 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Joban Kosan 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Joban Kosan Co Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Joban Kosan Co Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Coal sector.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Joban Kosan Co Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Coal industry. This can help Joban Kosan Co Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Joban Kosan Co Ltd products in the Coal industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Joban Kosan Co Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Joban Kosan Co Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Coal industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Joban Kosan 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 Joban Kosan Co Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Joban Kosan Co Ltd to increase its market reach. Joban Kosan 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Joban Kosan Co Ltd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Coal sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Joban Kosan Co Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Joban Kosan Co Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Developing new processes and practices
– Joban Kosan Co Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Coal 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Joban Kosan Co Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Coal 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Coal industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Joban Kosan 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. Joban Kosan 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.
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. Joban Kosan Co Ltd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Coal industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Joban Kosan 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.
Threats Joban Kosan Co Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Joban Kosan Co Ltd are -
Increasing wage structure of Joban Kosan 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 Joban Kosan Co Ltd.
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.
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. Joban Kosan Co Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Coal industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Joban Kosan 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 Joban Kosan Co Ltd prominent markets.
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 Joban Kosan Co Ltd.
Environmental challenges
– Joban Kosan 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. Joban Kosan Co Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Coal industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Joban Kosan 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 Coal industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Coal industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Joban Kosan Co Ltd can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Joban Kosan 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 Coal sector.
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. Joban Kosan 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Joban Kosan Co Ltd is facing in Coal sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Joban Kosan Co Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Coal industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Joban Kosan Co Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Coal 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 Joban Kosan Co Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Joban Kosan 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 Joban Kosan 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 Joban Kosan 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 Joban Kosan 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 Joban Kosan Co Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
