Crossfor Co (7810) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Jewelry & Silverware
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Crossfor Co (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Crossfor Co is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Crossfor Co can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Crossfor Co, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Crossfor Co 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 Crossfor Co can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Crossfor Co
2. Improving business portfolio management of Crossfor Co
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Jewelry & Silverware sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Crossfor Co
Strengths of Crossfor Co | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Crossfor Co are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Crossfor Co 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Crossfor Co in Jewelry & Silverware industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Jewelry & Silverware industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Crossfor Co digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Crossfor Co has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Jewelry & Silverware industry
– Crossfor Co has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Crossfor Co to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Jewelry & Silverware industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Crossfor Co to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Training and development
– Crossfor Co has one of the best training and development program in Consumer Cyclical 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Crossfor Co 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Crossfor Co has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Crossfor Co staying ahead in the Jewelry & Silverware industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Crossfor Co has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Crossfor Co to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Strong track record of project management in the Jewelry & Silverware industry
– Crossfor Co 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
– Crossfor Co has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Jewelry & Silverware industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Crossfor Co have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Crossfor Co is one of the most innovative firm in Jewelry & Silverware sector.
Analytics focus
– Crossfor Co 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 Jewelry & Silverware 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 Crossfor Co | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Crossfor Co are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Crossfor Co needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Jewelry & Silverware industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Crossfor Co can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Crossfor Co is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Jewelry & Silverware industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Crossfor Co 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Crossfor Co is just above the Jewelry & Silverware 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Crossfor Co has high operating costs in the Jewelry & Silverware industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Crossfor Co lucrative customers.
High dependence on Crossfor Co ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Crossfor Co still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Jewelry & Silverware industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Crossfor Co has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ less understanding of Crossfor Co strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Crossfor Co 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Crossfor Co has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Jewelry & Silverware industry over the last five years. Crossfor Co 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Crossfor Co has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Jewelry & Silverware industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Crossfor Co has some of the most successful models in the Jewelry & Silverware industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Crossfor Co should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Jewelry & Silverware industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Crossfor Co 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 Jewelry & Silverware industry.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Crossfor Co, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Jewelry & Silverware 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.
Crossfor Co Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Crossfor Co are -
Buying journey improvements
– Crossfor Co can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Jewelry & Silverware 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Crossfor Co can develop new processes and procedures in Jewelry & Silverware 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Crossfor Co 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Crossfor Co can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Jewelry & Silverware industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Crossfor Co 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. Crossfor Co 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Crossfor Co 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 Jewelry & Silverware industry.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Crossfor Co 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Jewelry & Silverware industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Crossfor Co can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Crossfor Co can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Crossfor Co operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Jewelry & Silverware sector.
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 Crossfor Co 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Crossfor Co to increase its market reach. Crossfor Co 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Jewelry & Silverware industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Crossfor Co in the Jewelry & Silverware industry. Now Crossfor Co can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Crossfor Co 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 Crossfor Co to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Crossfor Co External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Crossfor Co are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Crossfor Co is facing in Jewelry & Silverware sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Crossfor Co business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Crossfor Co in the Jewelry & Silverware sector and impact the bottomline 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Crossfor Co 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 Jewelry & Silverware industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Crossfor Co 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 Jewelry & Silverware industry.
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. Crossfor Co needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Jewelry & Silverware industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Crossfor Co.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Crossfor Co 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 Jewelry & Silverware industry and other sectors.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Crossfor Co in Jewelry & Silverware industry. The Jewelry & Silverware 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Jewelry & Silverware industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Crossfor Co can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Crossfor Co 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.
Increasing wage structure of Crossfor Co
– 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 Crossfor Co.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Crossfor Co Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Crossfor Co 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 Crossfor Co 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 Crossfor Co 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 Crossfor Co 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 Crossfor Co needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.