Asia Knight (ASKN) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Fabricated Plastic & Rubber
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Asia Knight (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Asia Knight is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing commodity prices, wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Asia Knight can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Asia Knight, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Asia Knight
2. Improving business portfolio management of Asia Knight
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Asia Knight
Strengths of Asia Knight | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Asia Knight are -
High brand equity
– Asia Knight has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Asia Knight to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Asia Knight 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 Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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 Asia Knight 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.
Digital Transformation in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Asia Knight digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Asia Knight 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
– Asia Knight is present in almost all the verticals within the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. This has provided Asia Knight 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Asia Knight 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Asia Knight comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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.
Training and development
– Asia Knight 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.
Learning organization
- Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Asia Knight emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry
– Asia Knight is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Asia Knight has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Asia Knight staying ahead in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Asia Knight is one of the most innovative firm in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector.
Weaknesses of Asia Knight | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Asia Knight are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Asia Knight has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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 dependence on Asia Knight ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Asia Knight still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Asia Knight has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Asia Knight 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 Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry using digital technology.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Asia Knight 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Asia Knight has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry over the last five years. Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Asia Knight is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Asia Knight vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Asia Knight has some of the most successful models in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Asia Knight should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Asia Knight, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Asia Knight is one of the leading players in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry in last five years.
Lack of clear differentiation of Asia Knight products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Asia Knight needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Malaysia, Asia Knight needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Asia Knight Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Asia Knight are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Asia Knight to increase its market reach. Asia Knight 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Asia Knight 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. Asia Knight 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Asia Knight in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. Now Asia Knight can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Asia Knight 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Asia Knight 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 Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Asia Knight has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. This can help Asia Knight to build a more holistic ecosystem for Asia Knight products in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Asia Knight 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Asia Knight 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Asia Knight can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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 Asia Knight can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Asia Knight can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Asia Knight are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry are lowering. It can presents Asia Knight with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Asia Knight can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Asia Knight 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 Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry.
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 Asia Knight.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight prominent markets.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Asia Knight 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 Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry and other sectors.
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 Asia Knight in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Asia Knight business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Asia Knight 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 Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Asia Knight may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Fabricated Plastic & Rubber sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Asia Knight has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Asia Knight needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber 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. Asia Knight needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Fabricated Plastic & Rubber industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Asia Knight Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight 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 Asia Knight needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.