SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Jeil Technos (South Korea)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Jeil Technos is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is backlash against globalization, increasing commodity prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Jeil Technos can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Jeil Technos, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Jeil Technos 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 Jeil Technos can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Jeil Technos
2. Improving business portfolio management of Jeil Technos
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Korea
4. Making a Iron & Steel sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Jeil Technos
Strengths of Jeil Technos | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Jeil Technos are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Jeil Technos is present in almost all the verticals within the Iron & Steel industry. This has provided Jeil Technos 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.
Learning organization
- Jeil Technos 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 Jeil Technos is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Jeil Technos emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Jeil Technos in Iron & Steel industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Jeil Technos is one of the leading players in the Iron & Steel industry in South Korea. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in South Korea. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Jeil Technos has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Iron & Steel industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Jeil Technos have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Jeil Technos 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 brand equity
– Jeil Technos has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Jeil Technos to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Jeil Technos has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Jeil Technos 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.
Training and development
– Jeil Technos 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Jeil Technos comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Iron & Steel 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Jeil Technos in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Jeil Technos has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Jeil Technos to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Jeil Technos 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 Iron & Steel 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.
Weaknesses of Jeil Technos | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Jeil Technos are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Jeil Technos is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Iron & Steel industry, but Jeil Technos needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Jeil Technos to focus more on services in the Iron & Steel industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Jeil Technos needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Iron & Steel industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Jeil Technos can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Jeil Technos is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Iron & Steel industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Jeil Technos 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Jeil Technos products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Jeil Technos needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Jeil Technos is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Jeil Technos to provide better information regarding Iron & Steel products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High dependence on Jeil Technos ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Jeil Technos still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Iron & Steel industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Jeil Technos has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Jeil Technos 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 Iron & Steel industry using digital technology.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Jeil Technos, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Iron & Steel 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Jeil Technos has high operating costs in the Iron & Steel industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Jeil Technos lucrative customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Iron & Steel industry, Jeil Technos 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Jeil Technos is just above the Iron & Steel 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.
Jeil Technos Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Jeil Technos are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Jeil Technos in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Iron & Steel industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Jeil Technos can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Jeil Technos operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Iron & Steel sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Jeil Technos 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
– Jeil Technos can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Iron & Steel 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Jeil Technos has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Iron & Steel sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Jeil Technos to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Jeil Technos to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Jeil Technos 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Jeil Technos 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Iron & Steel industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Jeil Technos 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. Jeil Technos 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Iron & Steel industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Jeil Technos can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Jeil Technos 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Jeil Technos 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 Iron & Steel industry.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Jeil Technos 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.
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 Jeil Technos 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.
Threats Jeil Technos External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Jeil Technos are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Jeil Technos in Iron & Steel industry. The Iron & Steel 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Jeil Technos may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Iron & Steel sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Jeil Technos is facing in Iron & Steel sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Jeil Technos 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. Jeil Technos can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Iron & Steel 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 Jeil Technos.
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. Jeil Technos needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Iron & Steel industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Jeil Technos 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 Jeil Technos prominent markets.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Iron & Steel industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Jeil Technos can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Jeil Technos 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Jeil Technos 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 Iron & Steel industry regulations.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Jeil Technos will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Jeil Technos Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Jeil Technos 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 Jeil Technos 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 Jeil Technos 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 Jeil Technos 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 Jeil Technos needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.