SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Sajo Oyang (South Korea)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Sajo Oyang is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Sajo Oyang can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sajo Oyang, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sajo Oyang 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 Sajo Oyang can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Sajo Oyang
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sajo Oyang
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Korea
4. Making a Fish/Livestock sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Sajo Oyang
Strengths of Sajo Oyang | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sajo Oyang are -
Digital Transformation in Fish/Livestock industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Sajo Oyang digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Sajo Oyang 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Sajo Oyang has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Sajo Oyang 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Fish/Livestock industry
– Sajo Oyang has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Sajo Oyang to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Fish/Livestock industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Sajo Oyang to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Fish/Livestock industry
– Sajo Oyang is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Sajo Oyang 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.
Ability to lead change in Fish/Livestock
– Sajo Oyang is one of the leading players in the Fish/Livestock industry in South Korea. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Fish/Livestock industry in South Korea but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Sajo Oyang in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Sajo Oyang 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 Fish/Livestock industry. The technology infrastructure of South Korea 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Sajo Oyang is present in almost all the verticals within the Fish/Livestock industry. This has provided Sajo Oyang 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)
– Sajo Oyang has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Sajo Oyang staying ahead in the Fish/Livestock industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Sajo Oyang has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Fish/Livestock industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Sajo Oyang have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Sajo Oyang has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Sajo Oyang to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Sajo Oyang 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 Sajo Oyang | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Sajo Oyang are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Sajo Oyang, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Fish/Livestock 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Sajo Oyang is just above the Fish/Livestock 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.
Skills based hiring in Fish/Livestock industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Sajo Oyang 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 harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Sajo Oyang is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Sajo Oyang to provide better information regarding Fish/Livestock products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Sajo Oyang, in the dynamic environment of Fish/Livestock industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Sajo Oyang has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Sajo Oyang needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Fish/Livestock industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Sajo Oyang can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Sajo Oyang is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Sajo Oyang has high operating costs in the Fish/Livestock industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Sajo Oyang lucrative customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Fish/Livestock industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in South Korea, Sajo Oyang 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 Fish/Livestock industry.
Employees’ less understanding of Sajo Oyang strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Sajo Oyang don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of South Korea, Sajo Oyang needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
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 Sajo Oyang supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Sajo Oyang is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Sajo Oyang vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Sajo Oyang Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Sajo Oyang are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Sajo Oyang can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Sajo Oyang operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Fish/Livestock sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Sajo Oyang 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
– Sajo Oyang 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Sajo Oyang can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Fish/Livestock 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Sajo Oyang can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Fish/Livestock 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Sajo Oyang 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Sajo Oyang in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Fish/Livestock industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Sajo Oyang 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 Sajo Oyang to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Sajo Oyang 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 Fish/Livestock industry.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Sajo Oyang 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 Sajo Oyang to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Sajo Oyang is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Sajo Oyang can utilize new technology in the field of Fish/Livestock industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Sajo Oyang has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Fish/Livestock industry. This can help Sajo Oyang to build a more holistic ecosystem for Sajo Oyang products in the Fish/Livestock 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 Sajo Oyang to increase its market reach. Sajo Oyang 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.
Threats Sajo Oyang External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Sajo Oyang are -
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 Sajo Oyang.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Sajo Oyang 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.
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 Sajo Oyang in the Fish/Livestock sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Fish/Livestock industry are lowering. It can presents Sajo Oyang with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Fish/Livestock sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Fish/Livestock industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Sajo Oyang can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Sajo Oyang is facing in Fish/Livestock sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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.
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 Sajo Oyang business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Sajo Oyang 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. Sajo Oyang can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Fish/Livestock industry.
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. Sajo Oyang needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Fish/Livestock industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Sajo Oyang has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Fish/Livestock industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Sajo Oyang needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Fish/Livestock 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Sajo Oyang 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 Sajo Oyang prominent markets.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Sajo Oyang may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Fish/Livestock sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sajo Oyang Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Sajo Oyang 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 Sajo Oyang 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 Sajo Oyang 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 Sajo Oyang 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 Sajo Oyang needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
