The Dhampur Sugar Mills (DAMS) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Food Processing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for The Dhampur Sugar Mills (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , The Dhampur Sugar Mills is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, increasing energy prices, there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of The Dhampur Sugar Mills
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that The Dhampur Sugar Mills can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the The Dhampur Sugar Mills, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of The Dhampur Sugar Mills
2. Improving business portfolio management of The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills
Strengths of The Dhampur Sugar Mills | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of The Dhampur Sugar Mills are -
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of The Dhampur Sugar Mills in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– The Dhampur Sugar Mills has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Learning organization
- The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at The Dhampur Sugar Mills emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– The Dhampur Sugar Mills has one of the best training and development program in Consumer/Non-Cyclical industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of The Dhampur Sugar Mills in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. The Dhampur Sugar Mills has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps The Dhampur Sugar Mills to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– The Dhampur Sugar Mills has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled The Dhampur Sugar Mills to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Food Processing
– The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For The Dhampur Sugar Mills digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– The Dhampur Sugar Mills is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in India. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in India. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Weaknesses of The Dhampur Sugar Mills | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of The Dhampur Sugar Mills are -
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at The Dhampur Sugar Mills, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. The Dhampur Sugar Mills has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as The Dhampur Sugar Mills is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, The Dhampur Sugar Mills has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Food Processing industry over the last five years. The Dhampur Sugar Mills 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of The Dhampur Sugar Mills is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but The Dhampur Sugar Mills needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help The Dhampur Sugar Mills to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of The Dhampur Sugar Mills products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, The Dhampur Sugar Mills needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Employees’ less understanding of The Dhampur Sugar Mills strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of India, The Dhampur Sugar Mills needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, The Dhampur Sugar Mills is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help The Dhampur Sugar 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.
The Dhampur Sugar Mills Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of The Dhampur Sugar Mills are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help The Dhampur Sugar Mills to increase its market reach. The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of The Dhampur Sugar Mills has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help The Dhampur Sugar Mills to build a more holistic ecosystem for The Dhampur Sugar Mills products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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. The Dhampur Sugar Mills can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help The Dhampur Sugar Mills to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– The Dhampur Sugar Mills 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.
Buying journey improvements
– The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects The Dhampur Sugar Mills can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– The Dhampur Sugar Mills can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Food Processing sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, The Dhampur Sugar Mills can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that The Dhampur Sugar Mills operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar 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, The Dhampur Sugar Mills is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Loyalty marketing
– The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Threats The Dhampur Sugar Mills External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of The Dhampur Sugar Mills are -
Regulatory challenges
– The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents The Dhampur Sugar 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.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for The Dhampur Sugar 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.
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. The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Environmental challenges
– The Dhampur Sugar Mills needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. The Dhampur Sugar Mills can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.
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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills.
Consumer confidence and its impact on The Dhampur Sugar 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– The Dhampur Sugar 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.
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.
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. The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of The Dhampur Sugar Mills Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar 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 The Dhampur Sugar Mills needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
