SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Speciality Restaurants Ltd (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Speciality Restaurants Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, wage bills are increasing, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Speciality Restaurants Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Speciality Restaurants Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Speciality Restaurants Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Speciality Restaurants Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Speciality Restaurants Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Restaurants sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Speciality Restaurants Ltd
Strengths of Speciality Restaurants Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Speciality Restaurants Ltd are -
Ability to lead change in Restaurants
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Restaurants industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Speciality Restaurants Ltd in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Restaurants industry
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Speciality Restaurants Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Restaurants industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Speciality Restaurants Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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.
High brand equity
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Speciality Restaurants Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Strong track record of project management in the Restaurants industry
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Restaurants industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Speciality Restaurants Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Speciality Restaurants Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd is one of the leading players in the Restaurants 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Restaurants sector.
Diverse revenue streams
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd is present in almost all the verticals within the Restaurants industry. This has provided Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Speciality Restaurants Ltd comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Restaurants 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.
Learning organization
- Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Speciality Restaurants Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Speciality Restaurants Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Speciality Restaurants Ltd are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Speciality Restaurants Ltd is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Restaurants industry in last five years.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Restaurants industry using digital technology.
Employees’ less understanding of Speciality Restaurants Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Speciality Restaurants Ltd don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Speciality Restaurants Ltd has high operating costs in the Restaurants industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Speciality Restaurants Ltd lucrative customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Speciality Restaurants Ltd is just above the Restaurants 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Speciality Restaurants Ltd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Restaurants industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Speciality Restaurants Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Speciality Restaurants Ltd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Restaurants industry, but Speciality Restaurants Ltd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Speciality Restaurants Ltd to focus more on services in the Restaurants industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Speciality Restaurants Ltd has some of the most successful models in the Restaurants industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Speciality Restaurants Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Speciality Restaurants Ltd has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Restaurants industry over the last five years. Speciality Restaurants Ltd even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Speciality Restaurants Ltd needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Restaurants industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Speciality Restaurants Ltd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Speciality Restaurants Ltd is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Restaurants industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Restaurants industry.
Speciality Restaurants Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Speciality Restaurants Ltd are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Developing new processes and practices
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Restaurants 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Speciality Restaurants Ltd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Restaurants industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Speciality Restaurants Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Speciality Restaurants Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Restaurants industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, 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, Speciality Restaurants Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Speciality Restaurants Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Restaurants sector.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Restaurants industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Speciality Restaurants Ltd in the Restaurants industry. Now Speciality Restaurants Ltd can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Restaurants sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Speciality Restaurants Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Speciality Restaurants Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Speciality Restaurants Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Restaurants industry. This can help Speciality Restaurants Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Speciality Restaurants Ltd products in the Restaurants industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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.
Threats Speciality Restaurants Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Speciality Restaurants Ltd are -
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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd in the Restaurants sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Speciality Restaurants Ltd is facing in Restaurants sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Restaurants industry regulations.
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. Speciality Restaurants Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Restaurants industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd.
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. Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 dependence on third party suppliers
– Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Restaurants 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Restaurants industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Speciality Restaurants Ltd can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Speciality Restaurants Ltd in Restaurants industry. The Restaurants 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd prominent markets.
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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Speciality Restaurants Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd 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 Speciality Restaurants Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
