Young & Co’s Brewery A (YNGa) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Restaurants
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Young & Co’s Brewery A (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Young & Co’s Brewery A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions,
there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Young & Co’s Brewery A
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Young & Co’s Brewery A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Young & Co’s Brewery A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Young & Co’s Brewery A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Young & Co’s Brewery A
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Restaurants sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Young & Co’s Brewery A
Strengths of Young & Co’s Brewery A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Young & Co’s Brewery A are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Young & Co’s Brewery A has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Young & Co’s Brewery A staying ahead in the Restaurants industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Young & Co’s Brewery A in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Young & Co’s Brewery A has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Young & Co’s Brewery A to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Young & Co’s Brewery A in Restaurants industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Training and development
– Young & Co’s Brewery A has one of the best training and development program in Services 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.
Learning organization
- Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Young & Co’s Brewery A emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Restaurants
– Young & Co’s Brewery A is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Restaurants industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Young & Co’s Brewery A in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Analytics focus
– Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Restaurants industry. The technology infrastructure of United Kingdom 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Young & Co’s Brewery A has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Restaurants industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Young & Co’s Brewery A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Young & Co’s Brewery A is one of the most innovative firm in Restaurants sector.
Weaknesses of Young & Co’s Brewery A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Young & Co’s Brewery A are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Young & Co’s Brewery A 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. Young & Co’s Brewery A should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Young & Co’s Brewery A is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Restaurants industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Young & Co’s Brewery A has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Restaurants industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High dependence on Young & Co’s Brewery A ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Young & Co’s Brewery A 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. Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Restaurants industry, Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
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 Young & Co’s Brewery A supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Young & Co’s Brewery A is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Young & Co’s Brewery A vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Young & Co’s Brewery A needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Young & Co’s Brewery A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Young & Co’s Brewery A are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Young & Co’s Brewery A has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Restaurants industry. This can help Young & Co’s Brewery A to build a more holistic ecosystem for Young & Co’s Brewery A products in the Restaurants industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Restaurants industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Young & Co’s Brewery A 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. Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Restaurants industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Young & Co’s Brewery A can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Young & Co’s Brewery A can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Young & Co’s Brewery A operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Restaurants sector.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Young & Co’s Brewery A can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Restaurants 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.
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 Young & Co’s Brewery A 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
– Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Young & Co’s Brewery A is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Threats Young & Co’s Brewery A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Young & Co’s Brewery A are -
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 Young & Co’s Brewery A business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Young & Co’s Brewery A may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Restaurants sector.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Restaurants industry are lowering. It can presents Young & Co’s Brewery A with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Restaurants sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
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. Young & Co’s Brewery A needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Restaurants industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Young & Co’s Brewery A
– 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
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. Young & Co’s Brewery A can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Young & Co’s Brewery A 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. Young & Co’s Brewery A can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Restaurants industry.
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 Young & Co’s Brewery A in the Restaurants sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Young & Co’s Brewery A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.