Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business
In 2010, three friends created Fruits of Sherbrooke as a way to rescue local fruit that would otherwise be wasted. The founders knew their efforts would be beneficial for the environment and for people in need of food. In February 2016, having grown their business into a successful social enterprise entirely through the help of volunteers, they faced important decisions. Realistically, they would not always be able to run the organization, which meant facing issues of succession. Additionally, they needed to decide how to balance growth strategies with their commitment to the social good. Should the organization focus on maximizing profitability or should decisions for growth be based only on providing the greatest benefit possible to the community and environment? The authors Amy Hingston, Cuong Pham, Andrew Phelan, Matthew Townley, David Vetters, and Joel Gehman are affiliated with University of Alberta.
Swot Analysis of "Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business" written by Amy Hingston, Leanne Hedberg Carlson, Cuong Pham, Andrew Phelan includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Sherbrooke Fruits facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Social enterprise, Succession planning, Sustainability and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business casestudy better are - – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing commodity prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing transportation and logistics costs, geopolitical disruptions, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sherbrooke Fruits, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sherbrooke Fruits 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 Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sherbrooke Fruits
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field.
4. Making a Innovation & Entrepreneurship topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Sherbrooke Fruits
Strengths Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sherbrooke Fruits in Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business Harvard Business Review case study are -
Innovation driven organization
– Sherbrooke Fruits is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Sherbrooke Fruits has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business - 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
– Sherbrooke Fruits has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – 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 Sherbrooke Fruits in the sector have low bargaining power. Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Sherbrooke Fruits to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Sherbrooke Fruits
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Sherbrooke Fruits does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Sherbrooke Fruits has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Sherbrooke Fruits is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Sherbrooke Fruits has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Sherbrooke Fruits 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.
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Sherbrooke Fruits 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 Sherbrooke Fruits in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Sherbrooke Fruits has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Sherbrooke Fruits are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Weaknesses Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business 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 Sherbrooke Fruits 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Sherbrooke Fruits has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Sherbrooke Fruits, firm in the HBR case study Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Sherbrooke Fruits 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 Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business, it seems that the employees of Sherbrooke Fruits 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Sherbrooke Fruits is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment. Sherbrooke Fruits needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Sherbrooke Fruits to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Sherbrooke Fruits has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business HBR case study mentions - Sherbrooke Fruits 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Sherbrooke Fruits has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business, is just above the industry average. Sherbrooke Fruits 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.
Opportunities Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business | 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 Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business are -
Buying journey improvements
– Sherbrooke Fruits can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business 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.
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. Sherbrooke Fruits can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Sherbrooke Fruits 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, Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Sherbrooke Fruits can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Sherbrooke Fruits 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Sherbrooke Fruits can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Sherbrooke Fruits operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Sherbrooke Fruits 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 Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Sherbrooke Fruits 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 Sherbrooke Fruits 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Sherbrooke Fruits can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Sherbrooke Fruits 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Sherbrooke Fruits 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
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Sherbrooke Fruits in the consumer business. Now Sherbrooke Fruits can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Manufacturing automation
– Sherbrooke Fruits can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Threats Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business are -
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. Sherbrooke Fruits needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Sherbrooke Fruits in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Sherbrooke Fruits 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.
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 Sherbrooke Fruits business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Sherbrooke Fruits is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Sherbrooke Fruits 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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. Sherbrooke Fruits 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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Sherbrooke Fruits 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 Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business .
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business, Sherbrooke Fruits may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Innovation & Entrepreneurship .
Increasing wage structure of Sherbrooke Fruits
– 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 Sherbrooke Fruits.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Sherbrooke Fruits 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 the industry and other sectors.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Sherbrooke Fruits 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business 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 Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business 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 Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business 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 Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business 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 Fruits of Sherbrooke: Creating a Sustainable Business 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 Sherbrooke Fruits needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.