SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Dharani Sugars Chemicals (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Dharani Sugars Chemicals is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Dharani Sugars Chemicals
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Dharani Sugars Chemicals can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Dharani Sugars Chemicals, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Dharani Sugars Chemicals
2. Improving business portfolio management of Dharani Sugars Chemicals
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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals
Strengths of Dharani Sugars Chemicals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Dharani Sugars Chemicals are -
Training and development
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Dharani Sugars Chemicals digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
High brand equity
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Dharani Sugars Chemicals to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Dharani Sugars Chemicals in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Dharani Sugars Chemicals in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Dharani Sugars Chemicals has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Dharani Sugars Chemicals to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Dharani Sugars Chemicals emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Dharani Sugars Chemicals has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Dharani Sugars Chemicals staying ahead in the Food Processing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Dharani Sugars Chemicals
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Dharani Sugars Chemicals does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of Dharani Sugars Chemicals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Dharani Sugars Chemicals are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Dharani Sugars Chemicals products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Dharani Sugars Chemicals needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Dharani Sugars Chemicals, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Dharani Sugars Chemicals has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
High dependence on Dharani Sugars Chemicals ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Dharani Sugars Chemicals is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Dharani Sugars Chemicals needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Dharani Sugars Chemicals to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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, Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Skills based hiring in Food Processing industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Dharani Sugars Chemicals Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Dharani Sugars Chemicals are -
Buying journey improvements
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Dharani Sugars Chemicals can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals in the Food Processing industry. Now Dharani Sugars Chemicals can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
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. Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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. Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Dharani Sugars Chemicals can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Dharani Sugars Chemicals can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Dharani Sugars Chemicals operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Dharani Sugars Chemicals to increase its market reach. Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Dharani Sugars Chemicals can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Food Processing industry.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Dharani Sugars Chemicals has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Dharani Sugars Chemicals to build a more holistic ecosystem for Dharani Sugars Chemicals products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Dharani Sugars Chemicals External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Dharani Sugars Chemicals are -
Environmental challenges
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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. Dharani Sugars Chemicals can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
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. Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 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. Dharani Sugars Chemicals needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Dharani Sugars Chemicals needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Food Processing sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Dharani Sugars Chemicals is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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.
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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Food Processing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Dharani Sugars Chemicals can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Dharani Sugars Chemicals Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals 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 Dharani Sugars Chemicals needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.