SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Sarveshwar Foods (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Sarveshwar Foods is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing energy prices, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Sarveshwar Foods can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sarveshwar Foods, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sarveshwar Foods 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 Sarveshwar Foods can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Sarveshwar Foods
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sarveshwar Foods
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Sarveshwar Foods
Strengths of Sarveshwar Foods | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sarveshwar Foods are -
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Sarveshwar Foods is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Sarveshwar Foods has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Sarveshwar Foods to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Sarveshwar Foods to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Sarveshwar Foods has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Sarveshwar Foods have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Sarveshwar Foods is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Sarveshwar Foods is one of the leading players in the 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.
Organizational Resilience of Sarveshwar Foods
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Sarveshwar Foods does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Sarveshwar Foods 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 Sarveshwar Foods is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Sarveshwar Foods emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in
– Sarveshwar Foods is one of the leading players in the industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Sarveshwar Foods in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Sarveshwar Foods has one of the best training and development program in 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Sarveshwar Foods 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.
Analytics focus
– Sarveshwar Foods is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure of India is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Sarveshwar Foods has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Sarveshwar Foods staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Sarveshwar Foods | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Sarveshwar Foods are -
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Sarveshwar Foods has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Sarveshwar Foods is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Sarveshwar Foods supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Sarveshwar Foods is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Sarveshwar Foods vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Sarveshwar Foods 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 industry.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Sarveshwar Foods is just above the 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Sarveshwar Foods strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Sarveshwar Foods 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Sarveshwar Foods is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Sarveshwar Foods to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Sarveshwar Foods needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Sarveshwar Foods can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Sarveshwar Foods is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Sarveshwar Foods has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Sarveshwar Foods lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Sarveshwar Foods, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Lack of clear differentiation of Sarveshwar Foods products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Sarveshwar Foods needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Sarveshwar Foods Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Sarveshwar Foods are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Sarveshwar Foods 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 Sarveshwar Foods to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Sarveshwar Foods has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Sarveshwar Foods to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Sarveshwar Foods to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Sarveshwar Foods in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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. Sarveshwar Foods can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Sarveshwar Foods can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Sarveshwar Foods 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 industry.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Sarveshwar Foods 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Sarveshwar Foods 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. Sarveshwar Foods 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Sarveshwar Foods can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Sarveshwar Foods can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Sarveshwar Foods operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Manufacturing automation
– Sarveshwar Foods can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Sarveshwar Foods 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Sarveshwar Foods has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Sarveshwar Foods to build a more holistic ecosystem for Sarveshwar Foods products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Sarveshwar Foods External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Sarveshwar Foods are -
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 Sarveshwar Foods.
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 industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Sarveshwar Foods can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Sarveshwar Foods has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Sarveshwar Foods needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Sarveshwar Foods 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 industry and other sectors.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Sarveshwar Foods 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 Sarveshwar Foods prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Sarveshwar Foods 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Sarveshwar Foods 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 industry regulations.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Sarveshwar Foods is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Sarveshwar Foods with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Sarveshwar Foods 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 industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Sarveshwar Foods may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sarveshwar Foods Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Sarveshwar Foods 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 Sarveshwar Foods 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 Sarveshwar Foods 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 Sarveshwar Foods 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 Sarveshwar Foods needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.