SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Shinyei Kaisha (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Shinyei Kaisha is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
geopolitical disruptions, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Shinyei Kaisha can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Shinyei Kaisha, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Shinyei Kaisha
2. Improving business portfolio management of Shinyei Kaisha
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Shinyei Kaisha
Strengths of Shinyei Kaisha | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Shinyei Kaisha are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Shinyei Kaisha 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)
– Shinyei Kaisha has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Shinyei Kaisha staying ahead in the Food Processing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Shinyei Kaisha is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Shinyei Kaisha does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Shinyei Kaisha digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Shinyei Kaisha 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.
Training and development
– Shinyei Kaisha has one of the best training and development program in Consumer/Non-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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Shinyei Kaisha comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Food Processing 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry
– Shinyei Kaisha has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Shinyei Kaisha to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Shinyei Kaisha to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Shinyei Kaisha emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Shinyei Kaisha is one of the leading players in the Food Processing 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Shinyei Kaisha 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.
Weaknesses of Shinyei Kaisha | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Shinyei Kaisha are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Shinyei Kaisha needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Food Processing industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Shinyei Kaisha can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Shinyei Kaisha is planning to shift buying processes online.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Shinyei Kaisha, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Food Processing 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Shinyei Kaisha has some of the most successful models in the Food Processing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Shinyei Kaisha should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Shinyei Kaisha is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Shinyei Kaisha needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Shinyei Kaisha to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Shinyei Kaisha products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Shinyei Kaisha needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Shinyei Kaisha is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Food Processing industry in last five years.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Shinyei Kaisha needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
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 Shinyei Kaisha supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Shinyei Kaisha is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Shinyei Kaisha vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha is just above the Food Processing 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 dependence on Shinyei Kaisha ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Shinyei Kaisha still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Food Processing industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Shinyei Kaisha has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Shinyei Kaisha Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Shinyei Kaisha are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Shinyei Kaisha can develop new processes and procedures in Food Processing 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
– Shinyei Kaisha can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Food Processing 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Shinyei Kaisha is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Shinyei Kaisha can utilize new technology in the field of Food Processing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Shinyei Kaisha in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Food Processing industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Shinyei Kaisha can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Shinyei Kaisha 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. Shinyei Kaisha 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Shinyei Kaisha has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Food Processing sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Shinyei Kaisha to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Shinyei Kaisha to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Shinyei Kaisha has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Shinyei Kaisha to build a more holistic ecosystem for Shinyei Kaisha products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Shinyei Kaisha 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, Shinyei Kaisha 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Shinyei Kaisha can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Shinyei Kaisha operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Food Processing industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Shinyei Kaisha in the Food Processing industry. Now Shinyei Kaisha can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Shinyei Kaisha External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Shinyei Kaisha 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. Shinyei Kaisha 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.
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 Shinyei Kaisha.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Shinyei Kaisha may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Food Processing sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Shinyei Kaisha 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.
Environmental challenges
– Shinyei Kaisha 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. Shinyei Kaisha can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Shinyei Kaisha has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Shinyei Kaisha needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Food Processing 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Shinyei Kaisha 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 Food Processing industry.
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 Shinyei Kaisha business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Shinyei Kaisha needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Shinyei Kaisha is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha prominent markets.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Shinyei Kaisha with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Food Processing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Shinyei Kaisha can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Shinyei Kaisha Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha 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 Shinyei Kaisha needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
