Sekisui Chemical ADR (SKSUY) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Sekisui Chemical ADR (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Sekisui Chemical ADR is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, geopolitical disruptions, technology disruption, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Sekisui Chemical ADR
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Sekisui Chemical ADR can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sekisui Chemical ADR, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 Sekisui Chemical ADR can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Sekisui Chemical ADR
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sekisui Chemical ADR
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Sekisui Chemical ADR
Strengths of Sekisui Chemical ADR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sekisui Chemical ADR are -
Innovation driven organization
– Sekisui Chemical ADR is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Sekisui Chemical ADR is one of the leading players in the 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.
Organizational Resilience of Sekisui Chemical ADR
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Sekisui Chemical ADR does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Sekisui Chemical ADR has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Sekisui Chemical ADR have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Sekisui Chemical ADR has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Sekisui Chemical ADR staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Sekisui Chemical ADR has one of the best training and development program in 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Sekisui Chemical ADR in the sector have low bargaining power. Sekisui Chemical ADR has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Sekisui Chemical ADR to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Sekisui Chemical ADR has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Sekisui Chemical ADR to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Sekisui Chemical ADR to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Sekisui Chemical ADR digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Sekisui Chemical ADR in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Sekisui Chemical ADR has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Weaknesses of Sekisui Chemical ADR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Sekisui Chemical ADR are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Sekisui Chemical ADR has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the 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 Sekisui Chemical ADR ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Sekisui Chemical ADR still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Sekisui Chemical ADR has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 industry.
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 Sekisui Chemical ADR supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Sekisui Chemical ADR is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Sekisui Chemical ADR vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Sekisui Chemical ADR has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Sekisui Chemical ADR should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Sekisui Chemical ADR has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Sekisui Chemical ADR is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Sekisui Chemical ADR needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Sekisui Chemical ADR to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Sekisui Chemical ADR products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Sekisui Chemical ADR needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Sekisui Chemical ADR is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Sekisui Chemical ADR Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Sekisui Chemical ADR are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Sekisui Chemical ADR is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Sekisui Chemical ADR can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Sekisui Chemical ADR in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 Sekisui Chemical ADR to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Sekisui Chemical ADR 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. Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Sekisui Chemical ADR has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Sekisui Chemical ADR to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Sekisui Chemical ADR to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Sekisui Chemical ADR can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Sekisui Chemical ADR can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Sekisui Chemical ADR operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Sekisui Chemical ADR to increase its market reach. Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Sekisui Chemical ADR can develop new processes and procedures in 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.
Threats Sekisui Chemical ADR External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Sekisui Chemical ADR are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 industry and other sectors.
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. Sekisui Chemical ADR needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Sekisui Chemical ADR is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Sekisui Chemical ADR 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. Sekisui Chemical ADR can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Sekisui Chemical ADR has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Sekisui Chemical ADR needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
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 Sekisui Chemical ADR business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Sekisui Chemical ADR in industry. The 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Sekisui Chemical ADR may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
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 Sekisui Chemical ADR.
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. Sekisui Chemical ADR 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.
Increasing wage structure of Sekisui Chemical ADR
– 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 Sekisui Chemical ADR.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sekisui Chemical ADR Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 Sekisui Chemical ADR 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 Sekisui Chemical ADR needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.