SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for ABM Fujiya (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , ABM Fujiya is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that ABM Fujiya can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the ABM Fujiya, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which ABM Fujiya 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 ABM Fujiya can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of ABM Fujiya
2. Improving business portfolio management of ABM Fujiya
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Electronic Instr. & Controls sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of ABM Fujiya
Strengths of ABM Fujiya | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of ABM Fujiya are -
Diverse revenue streams
– ABM Fujiya is present in almost all the verticals within the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry. This has provided ABM Fujiya 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 lead change in Electronic Instr. & Controls
– ABM Fujiya is one of the leading players in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry in Malaysia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry in Malaysia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled ABM Fujiya in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– ABM Fujiya has one of the best training and development program in Technology 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.
High brand equity
– ABM Fujiya has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled ABM Fujiya to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of ABM Fujiya comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Electronic Instr. & Controls 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.
Digital Transformation in Electronic Instr. & Controls industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For ABM Fujiya digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. ABM Fujiya 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of ABM Fujiya in the Technology sector have low bargaining power. ABM Fujiya has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps ABM Fujiya to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– ABM Fujiya has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – ABM Fujiya staying ahead in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- ABM Fujiya 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 ABM Fujiya is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at ABM Fujiya emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the ABM Fujiya 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that ABM Fujiya 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry
– ABM Fujiya is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of ABM Fujiya | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of ABM Fujiya are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry, ABM Fujiya 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 ABM Fujiya needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at ABM Fujiya can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as ABM Fujiya is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though ABM Fujiya has some of the most successful models in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. ABM Fujiya should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– ABM Fujiya 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Malaysia, ABM Fujiya needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of ABM Fujiya is just above the Electronic Instr. & Controls 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, ABM Fujiya has high operating costs in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract ABM Fujiya lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring in Electronic Instr. & Controls industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at ABM Fujiya 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, ABM Fujiya 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 Electronic Instr. & Controls industry using digital technology.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Electronic Instr. & Controls industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Malaysia, ABM Fujiya 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 Electronic Instr. & Controls industry.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of ABM Fujiya, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Electronic Instr. & Controls 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.
ABM Fujiya Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of ABM Fujiya are -
Loyalty marketing
– ABM Fujiya 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at ABM Fujiya 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 Electronic Instr. & Controls industry.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Electronic Instr. & Controls industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. ABM Fujiya can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help ABM Fujiya to increase its market reach. ABM Fujiya 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects ABM Fujiya can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– ABM Fujiya can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Electronic Instr. & Controls 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, ABM Fujiya is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. ABM Fujiya can utilize new technology in the field of Electronic Instr. & Controls industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for ABM Fujiya 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 ABM Fujiya to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Leveraging digital technologies
– ABM Fujiya 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, ABM Fujiya 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 ABM Fujiya to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Manufacturing automation
– ABM Fujiya can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Electronic Instr. & Controls sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for ABM Fujiya 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, ABM Fujiya can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that ABM Fujiya operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Electronic Instr. & Controls sector.
Threats ABM Fujiya External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of ABM Fujiya are -
Regulatory challenges
– ABM Fujiya 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 Electronic Instr. & Controls industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that ABM Fujiya is facing in Electronic Instr. & Controls sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– ABM Fujiya 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. ABM Fujiya can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Electronic Instr. & Controls industry are lowering. It can presents ABM Fujiya with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Electronic Instr. & Controls sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– ABM Fujiya 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 Electronic Instr. & Controls industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– ABM Fujiya has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, ABM Fujiya needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Electronic Instr. & Controls 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for ABM Fujiya in Electronic Instr. & Controls industry. The Electronic Instr. & Controls 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.
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 ABM Fujiya.
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 ABM Fujiya business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of ABM Fujiya
– 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 ABM Fujiya.
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. ABM Fujiya needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Electronic Instr. & Controls industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, ABM Fujiya may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Electronic Instr. & Controls sector.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of ABM Fujiya Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at ABM Fujiya 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 ABM Fujiya 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 ABM Fujiya 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 ABM Fujiya 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 ABM Fujiya needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
