Asahi Concrete Works (5268) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Construction - Raw Materials
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Asahi Concrete Works (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Asahi Concrete Works is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Asahi Concrete Works
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Asahi Concrete Works can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Asahi Concrete Works, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Asahi Concrete Works
2. Improving business portfolio management of Asahi Concrete Works
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Construction - Raw Materials sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Asahi Concrete Works
Strengths of Asahi Concrete Works | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Asahi Concrete Works are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Asahi Concrete Works comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Training and development
– Asahi Concrete Works has one of the best training and development program in Capital Goods 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
– Asahi Concrete Works is one of the most innovative firm in Construction - Raw Materials sector.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– Asahi Concrete Works has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Asahi Concrete Works to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Asahi Concrete Works to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Construction - Raw Materials
– Asahi Concrete Works is one of the leading players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Asahi Concrete Works in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Asahi Concrete Works 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.
Learning organization
- Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Asahi Concrete Works emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Asahi Concrete Works in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Asahi Concrete Works has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Asahi Concrete Works to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management in the Construction - Raw Materials industry
– Asahi Concrete Works is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Organizational Resilience of Asahi Concrete Works
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Asahi Concrete Works does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Asahi Concrete Works has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Asahi Concrete Works staying ahead in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Asahi Concrete Works has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Asahi Concrete Works 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.
Weaknesses of Asahi Concrete Works | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Asahi Concrete Works are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Asahi Concrete Works is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Asahi Concrete Works to provide better information regarding Construction - Raw Materials products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Asahi Concrete Works has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Skills based hiring in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Asahi Concrete Works 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Asahi Concrete Works, in the dynamic environment of Construction - Raw Materials industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Asahi Concrete Works has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Asahi Concrete Works has some of the most successful models in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Asahi Concrete Works should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Asahi Concrete Works is one of the leading players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in last five years.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Asahi Concrete Works needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Asahi Concrete Works 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry using digital technology.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Asahi Concrete Works has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Construction - Raw Materials industry over the last five years. Asahi Concrete Works 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Asahi Concrete Works 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Asahi Concrete Works, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Asahi Concrete Works Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Asahi Concrete Works are -
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Asahi Concrete Works has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Construction - Raw Materials industry. This can help Asahi Concrete Works to build a more holistic ecosystem for Asahi Concrete Works products in the Construction - Raw Materials industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Asahi Concrete Works can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Asahi Concrete Works 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry.
Loyalty marketing
– Asahi Concrete Works 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.
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. Asahi Concrete Works can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Asahi Concrete Works in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Construction - Raw Materials 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 Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Asahi Concrete Works 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Asahi Concrete Works has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Construction - Raw Materials sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Asahi Concrete Works to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Asahi Concrete Works to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Construction - Raw Materials industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Asahi Concrete Works 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. Asahi Concrete Works 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Asahi Concrete Works in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. Now Asahi Concrete Works can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Asahi Concrete Works is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Asahi Concrete Works can utilize new technology in the field of Construction - Raw Materials industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats Asahi Concrete Works External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Asahi Concrete Works are -
Increasing wage structure of Asahi Concrete Works
– 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 Asahi Concrete Works.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Asahi Concrete Works may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Construction - Raw Materials sector.
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. Asahi Concrete Works needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Construction - Raw Materials industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Asahi Concrete Works 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Asahi Concrete Works 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry.
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.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Asahi Concrete Works in Construction - Raw Materials industry. The Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Construction - Raw Materials industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Asahi Concrete Works can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Asahi Concrete Works 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. Asahi Concrete Works can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Construction - Raw Materials industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Asahi Concrete Works 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Asahi Concrete Works Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works 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 Asahi Concrete Works needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.