Blue Blends India Ltd (BLBL) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Textiles - Non Apparel
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Blue Blends India Ltd (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Blue Blends India Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Blue Blends India Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Blue Blends India Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Blue Blends India Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Blue Blends India 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 Blue Blends India Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Blue Blends India Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Blue Blends India Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Textiles - Non Apparel sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Blue Blends India Ltd
Strengths of Blue Blends India Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Blue Blends India Ltd are -
Digital Transformation in Textiles - Non Apparel industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Blue Blends India Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Blue Blends India 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Blue Blends India Ltd in Textiles - Non Apparel industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Blue Blends India Ltd has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Textiles - Non Apparel industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Blue Blends India Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to lead change in Textiles - Non Apparel
– Blue Blends India Ltd is one of the leading players in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Blue Blends India Ltd in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Innovation driven organization
– Blue Blends India Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Textiles - Non Apparel sector.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Textiles - Non Apparel industry
– Blue Blends India Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Blue Blends India Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Blue Blends India Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Blue Blends India Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Blue Blends India Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Blue Blends India Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Blue Blends India Ltd staying ahead in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry
– Blue Blends India 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.
Learning organization
- Blue Blends India 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 Blue Blends India Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Blue Blends India Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Blue Blends India Ltd 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.
Training and development
– Blue Blends India Ltd has one of the best training and development program in Consumer 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.
Weaknesses of Blue Blends India Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Blue Blends India Ltd are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Blue Blends India Ltd has high operating costs in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Blue Blends India Ltd lucrative customers.
Employees’ less understanding of Blue Blends India Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Blue Blends India 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 dependence on Blue Blends India Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Blue Blends India Ltd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Textiles - Non Apparel industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Blue Blends India Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Blue Blends India Ltd has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Textiles - Non Apparel industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Blue Blends India 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 Textiles - Non Apparel industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Blue Blends India 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 Textiles - Non Apparel industry using digital technology.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Blue Blends India Ltd has some of the most successful models in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Blue Blends India Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Blue Blends India Ltd is just above the Textiles - Non Apparel 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Blue Blends India 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 Textiles - Non Apparel industry over the last five years. Blue Blends India 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Blue Blends India Ltd is one of the leading players in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry in last five years.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Blue Blends India Ltd 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.
Blue Blends India Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Blue Blends India Ltd are -
Buying journey improvements
– Blue Blends India Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Textiles - Non Apparel 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Blue Blends India 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Blue Blends India Ltd 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 Textiles - Non Apparel industry.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Blue Blends India 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Blue Blends India Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Blue Blends India Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Textiles - Non Apparel industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Blue Blends India Ltd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Textiles - Non Apparel sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Blue Blends India Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Blue Blends India Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Blue Blends India Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Textiles - Non Apparel industry. This can help Blue Blends India Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Blue Blends India Ltd products in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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. Blue Blends India Ltd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Blue Blends India Ltd 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. Blue Blends India Ltd 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Blue Blends India Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Textiles - Non Apparel 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Blue Blends India 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Blue Blends India Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Blue Blends India Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Textiles - Non Apparel sector.
Loyalty marketing
– Blue Blends India 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.
Threats Blue Blends India Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Blue Blends India Ltd are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Blue Blends India Ltd 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 Textiles - Non Apparel industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Blue Blends India Ltd in Textiles - Non Apparel industry. The Textiles - Non Apparel 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.
Increasing wage structure of Blue Blends India Ltd
– 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 Blue Blends India Ltd.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Blue Blends India 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.
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. Blue Blends India 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.
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 Blue Blends India Ltd.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Blue Blends India 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 Textiles - Non Apparel industry and other sectors.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Blue Blends India Ltd is facing in Textiles - Non Apparel sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Textiles - Non Apparel industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Blue Blends India Ltd can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Regulatory challenges
– Blue Blends India 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 Textiles - Non Apparel industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Blue Blends India Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Textiles - Non Apparel industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Blue Blends India Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Textiles - Non Apparel 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.
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. Blue Blends India Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Textiles - Non Apparel industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Blue Blends India Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Blue Blends India 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 Blue Blends India 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 Blue Blends India 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 Blue Blends India 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 Blue Blends India Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
