Balrampur Chini Mills (BACH) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Balrampur Chini Mills (India)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Balrampur Chini Mills is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Balrampur Chini Mills

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Balrampur Chini Mills can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Balrampur Chini Mills, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Balrampur Chini Mills can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Balrampur Chini Mills
2. Improving business portfolio management of Balrampur Chini Mills
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Balrampur Chini Mills

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Strengths of Balrampur Chini Mills | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Balrampur Chini Mills are -

Successful track record of launching new products

– Balrampur Chini Mills has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Analytics focus

– Balrampur Chini Mills 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 Food Processing industry. The technology infrastructure of India 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.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Balrampur Chini Mills comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Food Processing 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.

Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry

– Balrampur Chini Mills is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Balrampur Chini Mills digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Diverse revenue streams

– Balrampur Chini Mills is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry

– Balrampur Chini Mills has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Balrampur Chini Mills to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Balrampur Chini Mills to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Ability to lead change in Food Processing

– Balrampur Chini Mills is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Food Processing industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Balrampur Chini Mills in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Highly skilled collaborators

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

Innovation driven organization

– Balrampur Chini Mills is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.

Learning organization

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

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Weaknesses of Balrampur Chini Mills | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Balrampur Chini Mills are -

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Balrampur Chini Mills 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 Food Processing industry using digital technology.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Balrampur Chini Mills is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Balrampur Chini Mills needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Balrampur Chini Mills to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Balrampur Chini Mills has high operating costs in the Food Processing industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Balrampur Chini Mills lucrative customers.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Balrampur Chini Mills is just above the Food Processing 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.

High dependence on Balrampur Chini Mills ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Balrampur Chini Mills still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Food Processing industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Balrampur Chini Mills has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Balrampur Chini Mills, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Food Processing industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.

Need for greater diversity

– Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Skills based hiring in Food Processing industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Aligning sales with marketing

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

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Balrampur Chini Mills Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Balrampur Chini Mills are -

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Balrampur Chini Mills can develop new processes and procedures in Food Processing 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.

Increase in government spending

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

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

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. Balrampur Chini Mills can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

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 Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Balrampur Chini Mills 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

– Balrampur Chini Mills has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Balrampur Chini Mills 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. Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

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

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Balrampur Chini Mills is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Balrampur Chini Mills can utilize new technology in the field of Food Processing 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 Balrampur Chini Mills in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Food Processing industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Balrampur Chini Mills to increase its market reach. Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

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Threats Balrampur Chini Mills External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Balrampur Chini Mills are -

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Balrampur Chini Mills with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing 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 Balrampur Chini Mills.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Balrampur Chini Mills 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.

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.

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 Balrampur Chini Mills business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Balrampur Chini Mills 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.

Increasing wage structure of Balrampur Chini Mills

– 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 Balrampur Chini Mills.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Balrampur Chini Mills in Food Processing industry. The Food Processing 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.

Regulatory challenges

– Balrampur Chini Mills 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 Food Processing industry regulations.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Balrampur Chini Mills 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 Balrampur Chini Mills prominent markets.

Learning curve for new practices

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

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. Balrampur Chini Mills needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Balrampur Chini Mills is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Balrampur Chini Mills Template, Example

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

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