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 – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, geopolitical disruptions,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing commodity prices, 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 -
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.
Organizational Resilience of Young & Co’s Brewery A
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Young & Co’s Brewery A does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Young & Co’s Brewery A is present in almost all the verticals within the Restaurants industry. This has provided Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Young & Co’s Brewery A has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Digital Transformation in Restaurants industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Young & Co’s Brewery A digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Young & Co’s Brewery A is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry in United Kingdom. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United Kingdom. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– Young & Co’s Brewery A is one of the most innovative firm in Restaurants sector.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Restaurants industry
– Young & Co’s Brewery A has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Young & Co’s Brewery A to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Restaurants industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Young & Co’s Brewery A to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
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 -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Young & Co’s Brewery A has high operating costs in the Restaurants industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Young & Co’s Brewery A lucrative customers.
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.
Employees’ less understanding of Young & Co’s Brewery A strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Young & Co’s Brewery A is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Young & Co’s Brewery A to provide better information regarding Restaurants products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
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 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.
Skills based hiring in Restaurants industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
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.
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.
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 -
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Restaurants industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Young & Co’s Brewery A in the Restaurants industry. Now Young & Co’s Brewery A can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Loyalty marketing
– Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
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. Young & Co’s Brewery A can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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.
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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Young & Co’s Brewery A 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.
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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Young & Co’s Brewery A can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Young & Co’s Brewery A prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Young & Co’s Brewery A has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Restaurants industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Young & Co’s Brewery A needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Restaurants 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.
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.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Restaurants industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Young & Co’s Brewery A 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 Restaurants industry.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 Young & Co’s Brewery A.
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.
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.