Arctic Glacier Income Fund (AGUNF) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Arctic Glacier Income Fund (United States)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Arctic Glacier Income Fund is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is backlash against globalization, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Arctic Glacier Income Fund

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Arctic Glacier Income Fund can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Arctic Glacier Income Fund, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Arctic Glacier Income Fund can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Arctic Glacier Income Fund
2. Improving business portfolio management of Arctic Glacier Income Fund
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Arctic Glacier Income Fund

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Strengths of Arctic Glacier Income Fund | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Arctic Glacier Income Fund are -

Analytics focus

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Food Processing industry. The technology infrastructure of United States 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.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

High brand equity

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Arctic Glacier Income Fund to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Diverse revenue streams

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Arctic Glacier Income Fund staying ahead in the Food Processing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Learning organization

- Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Arctic Glacier Income Fund emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

Organizational Resilience of Arctic Glacier Income Fund

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Arctic Glacier Income Fund does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Arctic Glacier Income Fund in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Ability to lead change in Food Processing

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Food Processing industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Arctic Glacier Income Fund in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

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Weaknesses of Arctic Glacier Income Fund | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Arctic Glacier Income Fund are -

Need for greater diversity

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Arctic Glacier Income Fund has high operating costs in the Food Processing industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Arctic Glacier Income Fund lucrative customers.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Arctic Glacier Income Fund has some of the most successful models in the Food Processing industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Arctic Glacier Income Fund should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Arctic Glacier Income Fund has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Food Processing industry over the last five years. Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at Arctic Glacier Income Fund, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Arctic Glacier Income Fund has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Skills based hiring in Food Processing industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

High dependence on Arctic Glacier Income Fund ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Arctic Glacier Income Fund still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Food Processing industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Arctic Glacier Income Fund has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

High bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Food Processing industry.

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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Arctic Glacier Income Fund is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Arctic Glacier Income Fund vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Arctic Glacier Income Fund is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Arctic Glacier Income Fund to provide better information regarding Food Processing products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Employees’ less understanding of Arctic Glacier Income Fund strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

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Arctic Glacier Income Fund Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Arctic Glacier Income Fund are -

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Food Processing sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Arctic Glacier Income Fund to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Arctic Glacier Income Fund to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Arctic Glacier Income Fund can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Arctic Glacier Income Fund operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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. Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Food Processing 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.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Food Processing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Arctic Glacier Income Fund can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund can develop new processes and procedures in Food Processing 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.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Arctic Glacier Income Fund can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Arctic Glacier Income Fund in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Food Processing 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. Arctic Glacier Income Fund can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

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Threats Arctic Glacier Income Fund External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Arctic Glacier Income Fund are -

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Arctic Glacier Income Fund with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing sector.

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.

Regulatory challenges

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Food Processing industry regulations.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Arctic Glacier Income Fund needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Food Processing 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.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Arctic Glacier Income Fund in Food Processing industry. The Food Processing 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. Arctic Glacier Income Fund needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Food Processing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Arctic Glacier Income Fund can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Food Processing industry.

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. Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.

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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Arctic Glacier Income Fund Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund 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 Arctic Glacier Income Fund needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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