SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Kobayashi Yoko (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Kobayashi Yoko is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption, increasing transportation and logistics costs, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
increasing commodity prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Kobayashi Yoko can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Kobayashi Yoko, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Kobayashi Yoko
2. Improving business portfolio management of Kobayashi Yoko
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 Kobayashi Yoko
Strengths of Kobayashi Yoko | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Kobayashi Yoko are -
Innovation driven organization
– Kobayashi Yoko is one of the most innovative firm in Investment Services sector.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Kobayashi Yoko has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Analytics focus
– Kobayashi Yoko 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 Investment Services 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.
Digital Transformation in Investment Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Kobayashi Yoko digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Kobayashi Yoko is present in almost all the verticals within the Investment Services industry. This has provided Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Kobayashi Yoko does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Kobayashi Yoko in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Kobayashi Yoko has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Kobayashi Yoko to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management in the Investment Services industry
– Kobayashi Yoko is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Kobayashi Yoko has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Kobayashi Yoko to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Kobayashi Yoko | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Kobayashi Yoko are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Kobayashi Yoko products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Kobayashi Yoko needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Kobayashi Yoko has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Kobayashi Yoko is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Kobayashi Yoko 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Investment Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Kobayashi Yoko 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 Investment Services industry.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Kobayashi Yoko 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. Kobayashi Yoko 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 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 Kobayashi Yoko supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Kobayashi Yoko is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Kobayashi Yoko vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Kobayashi Yoko 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 Investment Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Kobayashi Yoko is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Investment Services industry, but Kobayashi Yoko needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Kobayashi Yoko to focus more on services in the Investment Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Kobayashi Yoko has some of the most successful models in the Investment Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Kobayashi Yoko should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Kobayashi Yoko Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Kobayashi Yoko are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Kobayashi Yoko is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Kobayashi Yoko can utilize new technology in the field of Investment Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Kobayashi Yoko can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Kobayashi Yoko 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.
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. Kobayashi Yoko 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. Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Kobayashi Yoko can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Kobayashi Yoko operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Investment Services sector.
Threats Kobayashi Yoko External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Kobayashi Yoko are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Investment Services industry are lowering. It can presents Kobayashi Yoko with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Investment Services sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Kobayashi Yoko 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 Investment Services 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.
Increasing wage structure of Kobayashi Yoko
– 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 Kobayashi Yoko.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko.
Regulatory challenges
– Kobayashi Yoko 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 Investment Services industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– Kobayashi Yoko 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. Kobayashi Yoko can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Investment Services industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Kobayashi Yoko has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Investment Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Kobayashi Yoko needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Investment Services 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.
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. Kobayashi Yoko can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Kobayashi Yoko is facing in Investment Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Kobayashi Yoko 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Kobayashi Yoko Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko 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 Kobayashi Yoko needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.