Balrampur Chini Mills (BACH) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Food Processing
Strategy / 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 – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
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.
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
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 -
High brand equity
– Balrampur Chini Mills has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Balrampur Chini Mills to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Balrampur Chini Mills 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.
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.
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.
Organizational Resilience of Balrampur Chini Mills
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Balrampur Chini Mills does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
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.
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.
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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Balrampur Chini Mills in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
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.
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.
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 -
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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Balrampur Chini Mills is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Balrampur Chini Mills to provide better information regarding Food Processing products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Balrampur Chini Mills is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Food Processing industry in last five years.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Balrampur Chini Mills 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 Food Processing industry.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Balrampur Chini Mills has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Food Processing industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Balrampur Chini Mills, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Balrampur Chini Mills has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Lack of clear differentiation of Balrampur Chini Mills products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Balrampur Chini Mills needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Balrampur Chini Mills has some of the most successful models in the Food Processing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Balrampur Chini Mills should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ less understanding of Balrampur Chini Mills strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Balrampur Chini Mills 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.
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.
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 -
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Balrampur Chini Mills has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Balrampur Chini Mills to build a more holistic ecosystem for Balrampur Chini Mills products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Balrampur Chini Mills can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Food Processing industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Food Processing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Balrampur Chini Mills can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Food Processing industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Balrampur Chini Mills in the Food Processing industry. Now Balrampur Chini Mills can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Balrampur Chini Mills 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 Balrampur Chini Mills to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Balrampur Chini Mills has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Food Processing sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Balrampur Chini Mills to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Balrampur Chini Mills to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 -
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.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Balrampur Chini Mills 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 Food Processing industry.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Balrampur Chini Mills 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.
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.
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.