SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Hirose Tusyo (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Hirose Tusyo is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is backlash against globalization, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Hirose Tusyo can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hirose Tusyo, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hirose Tusyo 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 Hirose Tusyo can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Hirose Tusyo
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hirose Tusyo
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Investment Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Hirose Tusyo
Strengths of Hirose Tusyo | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hirose Tusyo are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Investment Services industry
– Hirose Tusyo has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Hirose Tusyo to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Investment Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Hirose Tusyo to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Hirose Tusyo has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Hirose Tusyo staying ahead in the Investment Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Hirose Tusyo 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Hirose Tusyo has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Hirose Tusyo 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.
Training and development
– Hirose Tusyo has one of the best training and development program in Financial 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Hirose Tusyo comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Investment Services 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.
High brand equity
– Hirose Tusyo has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Hirose Tusyo to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Hirose Tusyo 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 Hirose Tusyo is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Hirose Tusyo emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Investment Services
– Hirose Tusyo is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Investment Services industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Hirose Tusyo in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Hirose Tusyo is present in almost all the verticals within the Investment Services industry. This has provided Hirose Tusyo 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Hirose Tusyo is one of the leading players in the Investment Services 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Hirose Tusyo has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Investment Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Hirose Tusyo have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Hirose Tusyo | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Hirose Tusyo are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Hirose Tusyo has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Investment Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Hirose Tusyo needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Investment Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Hirose Tusyo can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Hirose Tusyo is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Hirose Tusyo is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Investment Services industry in last five years.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Hirose Tusyo needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Hirose Tusyo, in the dynamic environment of Investment Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Hirose Tusyo has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Skills based hiring in Investment Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Hirose Tusyo 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 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 Hirose Tusyo supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Hirose Tusyo is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Hirose Tusyo vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Hirose Tusyo has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Investment Services industry over the last five years. Hirose Tusyo 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Hirose Tusyo is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Investment Services industry, but Hirose Tusyo needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Hirose Tusyo to focus more on services in the Investment Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Hirose Tusyo has high operating costs in the Investment Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Hirose Tusyo lucrative customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Hirose Tusyo 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 Investment Services industry using digital technology.
Hirose Tusyo Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Hirose Tusyo are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Hirose Tusyo 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 Hirose Tusyo in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Investment Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Hirose Tusyo 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 Investment Services 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 Hirose Tusyo 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Investment Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Hirose Tusyo 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. Hirose Tusyo 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Hirose Tusyo 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Hirose Tusyo can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Investment Services 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Hirose Tusyo has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Investment Services industry. This can help Hirose Tusyo to build a more holistic ecosystem for Hirose Tusyo products in the Investment Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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, Hirose Tusyo can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Hirose Tusyo operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Investment Services sector.
Manufacturing automation
– Hirose Tusyo can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Investment Services 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Hirose Tusyo 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Hirose Tusyo can develop new processes and procedures in Investment Services 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Hirose Tusyo to increase its market reach. Hirose Tusyo 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.
Threats Hirose Tusyo External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Hirose Tusyo are -
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. Hirose Tusyo 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.
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. Hirose Tusyo needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Investment Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Hirose Tusyo 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 Investment Services industry and other sectors.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Hirose Tusyo may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Investment Services sector.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Investment Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Hirose Tusyo can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Hirose Tusyo
– 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 Hirose Tusyo.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hirose Tusyo 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 Hirose Tusyo prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Hirose Tusyo is facing in Investment Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Investment Services industry are lowering. It can presents Hirose Tusyo with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Investment Services sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Hirose Tusyo in Investment Services industry. The Investment Services 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.
Environmental challenges
– Hirose Tusyo 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. Hirose Tusyo can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Investment Services industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Hirose Tusyo Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Hirose Tusyo 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 Hirose Tusyo 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 Hirose Tusyo 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 Hirose Tusyo 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 Hirose Tusyo needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
