Keck Seng Malaysia (KSMS) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Keck Seng Malaysia (Malaysia)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Keck Seng Malaysia is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, geopolitical disruptions, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Keck Seng Malaysia

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Keck Seng Malaysia can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Keck Seng Malaysia, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Keck Seng Malaysia can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Keck Seng Malaysia
2. Improving business portfolio management of Keck Seng Malaysia
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Keck Seng Malaysia

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Strengths of Keck Seng Malaysia | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Keck Seng Malaysia are -

Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Keck Seng Malaysia digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Keck Seng Malaysia in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry

– Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Keck Seng Malaysia does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Learning organization

- Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Keck Seng Malaysia emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Keck Seng Malaysia in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Keck Seng Malaysia has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Keck Seng Malaysia to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Diverse revenue streams

– Keck Seng Malaysia is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Keck Seng Malaysia has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Keck Seng Malaysia 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

– Keck Seng Malaysia is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.

Analytics focus

– Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Food Processing industry. The technology infrastructure of Malaysia 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.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

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Weaknesses of Keck Seng Malaysia | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Keck Seng Malaysia are -

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Keck Seng Malaysia is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Keck Seng Malaysia needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Keck Seng Malaysia to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product 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 Keck Seng Malaysia supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Keck Seng Malaysia is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Keck Seng Malaysia vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Food Processing industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Keck Seng Malaysia 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 cash cycle compare to competitors

Keck Seng Malaysia has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Food Processing industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

High bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in Malaysia, Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Food Processing industry.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Keck Seng Malaysia is planning to shift buying processes online.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Keck Seng Malaysia, 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.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of Malaysia, Keck Seng Malaysia needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Keck Seng Malaysia is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Keck Seng Malaysia to provide better information regarding Food Processing products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Keck Seng Malaysia 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. Keck Seng Malaysia should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

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Keck Seng Malaysia Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Keck Seng Malaysia are -

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Food Processing 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 Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Keck Seng Malaysia is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Buying journey improvements

– Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

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 Keck Seng Malaysia in the Food Processing industry. Now Keck Seng Malaysia can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Loyalty marketing

– Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

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. Keck Seng Malaysia 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. Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Food Processing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Keck Seng Malaysia can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

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Threats Keck Seng Malaysia External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Keck Seng Malaysia are -

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. Keck Seng Malaysia needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Regulatory challenges

– Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Food Processing industry regulations.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Keck Seng Malaysia in Food Processing industry. The Food Processing 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.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Keck Seng Malaysia with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing sector.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

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. Keck Seng Malaysia can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

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 Keck Seng Malaysia.

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 Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Environmental challenges

– Keck Seng Malaysia 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. Keck Seng Malaysia can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.

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. Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Keck Seng Malaysia 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Keck Seng Malaysia Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia 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 Keck Seng Malaysia needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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