Ricoh Company (RICOY) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Ricoh Company (United States)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Ricoh Company is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, increasing commodity prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc

---

---

---

---

Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Ricoh Company

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Ricoh Company can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ricoh Company, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Ricoh Company
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ricoh Company
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Office Equipment sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ricoh Company

---

Strengths of Ricoh Company | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Ricoh Company are -

Strong track record of project management in the Office Equipment industry

– Ricoh Company 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 brand equity

– Ricoh Company has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Ricoh Company to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Diverse revenue streams

– Ricoh Company is present in almost all the verticals within the Office Equipment industry. This has provided Ricoh Company 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)

– Ricoh Company has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Ricoh Company staying ahead in the Office Equipment industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Learning organization

- Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Ricoh Company emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Ricoh Company 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.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Ricoh Company in the Technology sector have low bargaining power. Ricoh Company has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Ricoh Company to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Ricoh Company is one of the leading players in the Office Equipment industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

Innovation driven organization

– Ricoh Company is one of the most innovative firm in Office Equipment sector.

Analytics focus

– Ricoh Company 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 Office Equipment industry. The technology infrastructure of United States 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.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Ricoh Company in Office Equipment industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Ricoh Company has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Office Equipment industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Ricoh Company have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

---

---

Weaknesses of Ricoh Company | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Ricoh Company are -

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Ricoh Company needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Office Equipment industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Ricoh Company can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Ricoh Company is planning to shift buying processes online.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Ricoh Company is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Ricoh Company to provide better information regarding Office Equipment products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Ricoh Company has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Office Equipment industry over the last five years. Ricoh Company 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.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Ricoh Company is just above the Office Equipment 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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Ricoh Company 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 Office Equipment industry using digital technology.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Ricoh Company has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Office Equipment industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

Employees’ less understanding of Ricoh Company strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Ricoh Company 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.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Ricoh Company has some of the most successful models in the Office Equipment industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Ricoh Company should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

High bargaining power of channel partners in Office Equipment industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Ricoh Company 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 Office Equipment industry.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Ricoh Company has high operating costs in the Office Equipment industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Ricoh Company lucrative customers.

Skills based hiring in Office Equipment industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Ricoh Company 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.

---

Ricoh Company Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Ricoh Company are -

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Ricoh Company has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Office Equipment industry. This can help Ricoh Company to build a more holistic ecosystem for Ricoh Company products in the Office Equipment industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Buying journey improvements

– Ricoh Company can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Office Equipment 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Ricoh Company can develop new processes and procedures in Office Equipment industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.

Loyalty marketing

– Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company 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 Office Equipment industry.

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 Ricoh Company 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.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Ricoh Company 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.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Office Equipment industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Ricoh Company in the Office Equipment industry. Now Ricoh Company can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Ricoh Company can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Ricoh Company operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Office Equipment sector.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Ricoh Company 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.

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. Ricoh Company can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

---

Threats Ricoh Company External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Ricoh Company are -

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Office Equipment industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Ricoh Company 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

– Ricoh Company 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.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Ricoh Company 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 Office Equipment industry and other sectors.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Ricoh Company is facing in Office Equipment sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

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 Ricoh Company business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

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 Ricoh Company in the Office Equipment sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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 Ricoh Company.

Regulatory challenges

– Ricoh Company 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 Office Equipment industry regulations.

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.

Environmental challenges

– Ricoh Company 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. Ricoh Company can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Office Equipment industry.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company prominent markets.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Ricoh Company has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Office Equipment industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ricoh Company needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Office Equipment 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.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Ricoh Company may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Office Equipment sector.

---

Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ricoh Company Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company 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 Ricoh Company needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

--- ---