Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan
Earls Restaurants, Ltd., a Canadian restaurant chain headquartered in Vancouver, was facing a communications crisis in April 2016, when it changed its sourcing policy with regard to beef. In a bid to appeal to millennial consumers, who were conscious of animal welfare standards, it decided to source beef from a U.S. farm that had its beef independently certified as humane. This cut out the restaurant's traditional supply sources among Canadian ranchers, most specifically in Alberta, where the restaurant chain had been founded. The backlash was immediate. After discussing the situation with his core management team and asking a consultant for help formulating a communication strategy, the company's president had to decide how to proceed to restore the company's reputation. Should Earls do nothing and wait for the attention to die down, go back to sourcing its beef through Canadian suppliers, or continue to serve humane beef in its restaurants?
Authors :: Mary Weil, Ramasastry Chandrasekhar
Topics :: Organizational Development
Tags :: Public relations, Social platforms, SWOT Analysis, SWOT Matrix, TOWS, Weighted SWOT Analysis
Swot Analysis of "Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan" written by Mary Weil, Ramasastry Chandrasekhar includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Beef Earls facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Public relations, Social platforms and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan casestudy better are - – increasing commodity prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Beef Earls, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Beef Earls 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 Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Beef Earls
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Organizational Development field.
4. Making a Organizational Development topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Beef Earls
Strengths Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Beef Earls in Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Beef Earls in the sector have low bargaining power. Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Beef Earls to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Beef Earls 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 Beef Earls is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Beef Earls is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Beef Earls is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Beef Earls in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Beef Earls is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan case study 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Beef Earls is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Beef Earls is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Organizational Development industry
– Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Beef Earls to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Organizational Development industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Beef Earls to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Beef Earls
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Beef Earls does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Beef Earls 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Beef Earls has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Beef Earls 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 Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Beef Earls 's lucrative customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Mary Weil, Ramasastry Chandrasekhar suggests that, Beef Earls 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Beef Earls 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. Beef Earls 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Beef Earls is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Beef Earls 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan, it seems that the employees of Beef Earls 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Beef Earls 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan HBR case study mentions - Beef Earls 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Beef Earls 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 Beef Earls, firm in the HBR case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Organizational Development strategy. 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.
Opportunities Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan 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, Beef Earls can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Beef Earls operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Organizational Development sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Beef Earls can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan suggest that firm 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
– Beef Earls has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Beef Earls to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Beef Earls 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 Organizational Development segment.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Beef Earls 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, as suggested in case study, Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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. Beef Earls can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Beef Earls 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 Beef Earls to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Organizational Development industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Beef Earls can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Beef Earls in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Organizational Development segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Beef Earls 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Beef Earls can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Organizational Development segment. 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 Beef Earls 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Beef Earls 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.
Threats Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan, Beef Earls may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Organizational Development .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Organizational Development field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Beef Earls can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Beef Earls 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 Beef Earls in the Organizational Development sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Beef Earls 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 field.
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. Beef Earls needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Organizational Development 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, Beef Earls 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 prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan .
Regulatory challenges
– Beef Earls 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 Organizational Development industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Beef Earls
– 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 Beef Earls.
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 Beef Earls.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Beef Earls with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Beef Earls 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.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan 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 the case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan 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 the Harvard case study Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan 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 Earls Restaurants Ltd.: The Importance of a Communication Plan is 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 Beef Earls needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
