SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Citrus Plant5-L (Israel)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Citrus Plant5-L is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, technology disruption, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Citrus Plant5-L can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Citrus Plant5-L, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Citrus Plant5-L 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 Citrus Plant5-L can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Citrus Plant5-L
2. Improving business portfolio management of Citrus Plant5-L
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Israel
4. Making a Crops sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Citrus Plant5-L
Strengths of Citrus Plant5-L | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Citrus Plant5-L are -
Analytics focus
– Citrus Plant5-L 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 Crops industry. The technology infrastructure of Israel 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Citrus Plant5-L in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Citrus Plant5-L has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Citrus Plant5-L to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Citrus Plant5-L
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Citrus Plant5-L does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Citrus Plant5-L has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Citrus Plant5-L staying ahead in the Crops industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Citrus Plant5-L 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Citrus Plant5-L in Crops industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Citrus Plant5-L 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 Citrus Plant5-L is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Citrus Plant5-L emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Citrus Plant5-L comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Crops 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Citrus Plant5-L has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Crops industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Citrus Plant5-L have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management in the Crops industry
– Citrus Plant5-L is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Citrus Plant5-L 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Citrus Plant5-L has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Citrus Plant5-L has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Weaknesses of Citrus Plant5-L | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Citrus Plant5-L are -
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 Citrus Plant5-L supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Citrus Plant5-L is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Citrus Plant5-L vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Citrus Plant5-L is one of the leading players in the Crops industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Crops industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring in Crops industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Citrus Plant5-L 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Citrus Plant5-L, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Crops 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 Citrus Plant5-L products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Citrus Plant5-L needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Crops industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Israel, Citrus Plant5-L 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 Crops industry.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Israel, Citrus Plant5-L needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Citrus Plant5-L 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 Crops industry using digital technology.
High dependence on Citrus Plant5-L ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Citrus Plant5-L still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Crops industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Citrus Plant5-L has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Citrus Plant5-L is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Citrus Plant5-L to provide better information regarding Crops products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Citrus Plant5-L is just above the Crops 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.
Citrus Plant5-L Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Citrus Plant5-L are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Citrus Plant5-L has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Crops sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Citrus Plant5-L to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Citrus Plant5-L to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Citrus Plant5-L to increase its market reach. Citrus Plant5-L 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Citrus Plant5-L 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.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Citrus Plant5-L to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Developing new processes and practices
– Citrus Plant5-L can develop new processes and procedures in Crops 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Citrus Plant5-L 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 Citrus Plant5-L to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Citrus Plant5-L 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 Crops industry.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Citrus Plant5-L is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Citrus Plant5-L can utilize new technology in the field of Crops industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Crops industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Citrus Plant5-L in the Crops industry. Now Citrus Plant5-L can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Citrus Plant5-L has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Crops industry. This can help Citrus Plant5-L to build a more holistic ecosystem for Citrus Plant5-L products in the Crops industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Citrus Plant5-L in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Crops industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Citrus Plant5-L can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. Citrus Plant5-L can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Citrus Plant5-L External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Citrus Plant5-L are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Citrus Plant5-L may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Crops sector.
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 Citrus Plant5-L business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Citrus Plant5-L has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Crops industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Citrus Plant5-L needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Crops 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.
Increasing wage structure of Citrus Plant5-L
– 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 Citrus Plant5-L.
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. Citrus Plant5-L 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Crops industry are lowering. It can presents Citrus Plant5-L with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Crops sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Citrus Plant5-L 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 Crops industry and other sectors.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Citrus Plant5-L is facing in Crops sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Citrus Plant5-L 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 Citrus Plant5-L prominent markets.
Environmental challenges
– Citrus Plant5-L 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. Citrus Plant5-L can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Crops 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 Citrus Plant5-L.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Crops industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Citrus Plant5-L 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 Citrus Plant5-L Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Citrus Plant5-L 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 Citrus Plant5-L 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 Citrus Plant5-L 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 Citrus Plant5-L 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 Citrus Plant5-L needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.