Ta Ann (TAAN) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Forestry & Wood Products
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Ta Ann (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Ta Ann is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is backlash against globalization, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, 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 Ta Ann can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ta Ann, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ta Ann 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 Ta Ann can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Ta Ann
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ta Ann
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Forestry & Wood Products sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ta Ann
Strengths of Ta Ann | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Ta Ann are -
Strong track record of project management in the Forestry & Wood Products industry
– Ta Ann is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Ta Ann is one of the most innovative firm in Forestry & Wood Products sector.
High brand equity
– Ta Ann has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Ta Ann to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Ta Ann 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 Ta Ann is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Ta Ann emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Ta Ann 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Ta Ann has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Ta Ann 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Ta Ann is present in almost all the verticals within the Forestry & Wood Products industry. This has provided Ta Ann 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Ta Ann is one of the leading players in the Forestry & Wood Products industry in Malaysia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Malaysia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Ta Ann has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Forestry & Wood Products industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Ta Ann have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Ta Ann in Forestry & Wood Products industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Ta Ann has one of the best training and development program in Basic Materials 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.
Ability to lead change in Forestry & Wood Products
– Ta Ann is one of the leading players in the Forestry & Wood Products industry in Malaysia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Forestry & Wood Products industry in Malaysia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Ta Ann in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Ta Ann | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Ta Ann are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Ta Ann products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Ta Ann needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Forestry & Wood Products industry, Ta Ann 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Ta Ann, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Forestry & Wood Products 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.
High dependence on Ta Ann ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Ta Ann still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Forestry & Wood Products industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Ta Ann has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Ta Ann is one of the leading players in the Forestry & Wood Products industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Forestry & Wood Products industry in last five years.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Ta Ann 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Ta Ann needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Forestry & Wood Products industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Ta Ann can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Ta Ann is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Ta Ann is just above the Forestry & Wood Products 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Forestry & Wood Products industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Malaysia, Ta Ann 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 Forestry & Wood Products industry.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Ta Ann has high operating costs in the Forestry & Wood Products industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Ta Ann lucrative customers.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Ta Ann has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Forestry & Wood Products industry over the last five years. Ta Ann 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.
Ta Ann Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Ta Ann are -
Buying journey improvements
– Ta Ann can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Forestry & Wood Products 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Forestry & Wood Products industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Ta Ann 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. Ta Ann 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Ta Ann 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 Ta Ann to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Ta Ann 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Ta Ann 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Ta Ann has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Forestry & Wood Products industry. This can help Ta Ann to build a more holistic ecosystem for Ta Ann products in the Forestry & Wood Products industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Ta Ann can develop new processes and procedures in Forestry & Wood Products 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Ta Ann in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Forestry & Wood Products industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Forestry & Wood Products industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Ta Ann can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 Ta Ann 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, Ta Ann is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Ta Ann can utilize new technology in the field of Forestry & Wood Products industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Ta Ann to increase its market reach. Ta Ann 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Ta Ann 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 Forestry & Wood Products industry.
Threats Ta Ann External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Ta Ann are -
Increasing wage structure of Ta Ann
– 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 Ta Ann.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Ta Ann 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 Forestry & Wood Products 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. Ta Ann 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Ta Ann in Forestry & Wood Products industry. The Forestry & Wood Products 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Ta Ann 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 Forestry & Wood Products industry regulations.
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 Ta Ann business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Ta Ann may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Forestry & Wood Products sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Ta Ann 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.
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 Ta Ann.
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 Ta Ann in the Forestry & Wood Products sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Ta Ann has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Forestry & Wood Products industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ta Ann needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Forestry & Wood Products 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.
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. Ta Ann needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Forestry & Wood Products industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Ta Ann 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 Ta Ann prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ta Ann Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Ta Ann 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 Ta Ann 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 Ta Ann 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 Ta Ann 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 Ta Ann needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.