SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Sungei Bagan Rubber (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Sungei Bagan Rubber is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Sungei Bagan Rubber
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Sungei Bagan Rubber can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sungei Bagan Rubber, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Sungei Bagan Rubber
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sungei Bagan Rubber
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Crops sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Sungei Bagan Rubber
Strengths of Sungei Bagan Rubber | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sungei Bagan Rubber are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Sungei Bagan Rubber has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
Analytics focus
– Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Crops 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.
Training and development
– Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Sungei Bagan Rubber is one of the leading players in the Crops 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.
Ability to lead change in Crops
– Sungei Bagan Rubber is one of the leading players in the Crops industry in Malaysia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Crops industry in Malaysia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Sungei Bagan Rubber in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Sungei Bagan Rubber in Crops industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Sungei Bagan Rubber in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Sungei Bagan Rubber has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Sungei Bagan Rubber to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Sungei Bagan Rubber
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Sungei Bagan Rubber is present in almost all the verticals within the Crops industry. This has provided Sungei Bagan Rubber 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)
– Sungei Bagan Rubber has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Sungei Bagan Rubber staying ahead in the Crops industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
Weaknesses of Sungei Bagan Rubber | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Sungei Bagan Rubber are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Sungei Bagan Rubber, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Crops 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Sungei Bagan Rubber, in the dynamic environment of Crops industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Sungei Bagan Rubber has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
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 Sungei Bagan Rubber supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Sungei Bagan Rubber is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Sungei Bagan Rubber vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Sungei Bagan Rubber is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Crops industry, but Sungei Bagan Rubber needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Sungei Bagan Rubber to focus more on services in the Crops industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Malaysia, Sungei Bagan Rubber needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Sungei Bagan Rubber has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Crops industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Sungei Bagan Rubber is just above the Crops 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Crops industry, Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Sungei Bagan Rubber needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Crops industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Sungei Bagan Rubber can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Sungei Bagan Rubber is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Crops industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
Sungei Bagan Rubber Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Sungei Bagan Rubber are -
Buying journey improvements
– Sungei Bagan Rubber can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Crops 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Sungei Bagan Rubber in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Crops industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Developing new processes and practices
– Sungei Bagan Rubber can develop new processes and procedures in Crops 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Crops industry. This can help Sungei Bagan Rubber to build a more holistic ecosystem for Sungei Bagan Rubber products in the Crops industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Sungei Bagan Rubber to increase its market reach. Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Sungei Bagan Rubber can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Sungei Bagan Rubber operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Crops sector.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Crops industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Sungei Bagan Rubber in the Crops industry. Now Sungei Bagan Rubber can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Sungei Bagan Rubber has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Crops sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Sungei Bagan Rubber to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Sungei Bagan Rubber to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Crops industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Sungei Bagan Rubber can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Crops industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Sungei Bagan Rubber 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. Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Crops industry.
Threats Sungei Bagan Rubber External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Sungei Bagan Rubber are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Crops industry are lowering. It can presents Sungei Bagan Rubber with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Crops sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Sungei Bagan Rubber is facing in Crops sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Sungei Bagan Rubber
– 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber.
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 Sungei Bagan Rubber.
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 Sungei Bagan Rubber in the Crops sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Sungei Bagan Rubber 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. Sungei Bagan Rubber can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Crops industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Crops industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Crops industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Sungei Bagan Rubber can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Crops industry and other sectors.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Sungei Bagan Rubber 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.
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. Sungei Bagan Rubber needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Crops industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Crops industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sungei Bagan Rubber Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber 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 Sungei Bagan Rubber needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.