SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Freight Management (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Freight Management is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Freight Management
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Freight Management can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Freight Management, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Freight Management 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 Freight Management can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Freight Management
2. Improving business portfolio management of Freight Management
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Air Courier sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Freight Management
Strengths of Freight Management | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Freight Management are -
Ability to lead change in Air Courier
– Freight Management is one of the leading players in the Air Courier industry in Malaysia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Air Courier industry in Malaysia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Freight Management in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Freight Management has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Freight Management staying ahead in the Air Courier industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Freight Management is present in almost all the verticals within the Air Courier industry. This has provided Freight Management 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Freight Management has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Air Courier industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Freight Management have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Freight Management has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Freight Management to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Freight Management comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Air Courier 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Freight Management in Air Courier industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Freight Management has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Freight Management 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
– Freight Management is one of the leading players in the Air Courier 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Freight Management in the Transportation sector have low bargaining power. Freight Management has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Freight Management to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management in the Air Courier industry
– Freight Management is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Air Courier industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Freight Management digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Freight Management 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.
Weaknesses of Freight Management | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Freight Management are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Freight Management has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Air Courier industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Freight Management has some of the most successful models in the Air Courier industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Freight Management should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring in Air Courier industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Freight Management 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Freight Management is one of the leading players in the Air Courier industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Air Courier industry in last five years.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Freight Management is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Freight Management to provide better information regarding Air Courier products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Freight Management 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Freight Management has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Air Courier industry over the last five years. Freight Management 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Freight Management, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Air Courier 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Freight Management products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Freight Management 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 Air Courier industry, Freight Management 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.
High dependence on Freight Management ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Freight Management still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Air Courier industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Freight Management has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Freight Management Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Freight Management are -
Buying journey improvements
– Freight Management can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Air Courier 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Freight Management can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Freight Management is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Freight Management can utilize new technology in the field of Air Courier industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Air Courier industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Freight Management can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Air Courier industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Freight Management in the Air Courier industry. Now Freight Management can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Freight Management 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Freight Management 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 Freight Management 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 Freight Management 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Air Courier industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Freight Management 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. Freight Management 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 Freight Management 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 Freight Management to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Freight Management can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Freight Management has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Air Courier sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Freight Management to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Freight Management to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Freight Management 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.
Threats Freight Management External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Freight Management are -
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Freight Management in Air Courier industry. The Air Courier 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.
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 Freight Management in the Air Courier sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Air Courier industry are lowering. It can presents Freight Management with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Air Courier sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Freight Management 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 Air Courier industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Freight Management 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 Air Courier industry regulations.
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 Freight Management.
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 Freight Management business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Freight Management 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 Freight Management prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Freight Management 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 Air Courier industry and other sectors.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Freight Management 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Freight Management is facing in Air Courier sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Freight Management Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Freight Management 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 Freight Management 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 Freight Management 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 Freight Management 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 Freight Management needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.