Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Amira Nature Fds is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing transportation and logistics costs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing, increasing energy prices,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Amira Nature Fds can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Amira Nature Fds, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Amira Nature Fds
2. Improving business portfolio management of Amira Nature Fds
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 Amira Nature Fds
Strengths of Amira Nature Fds | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Amira Nature Fds are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Amira Nature Fds 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Amira Nature Fds 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Amira Nature Fds has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Food Processing industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Amira Nature Fds have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Amira Nature Fds
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Amira Nature Fds does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Amira Nature Fds emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Amira Nature Fds is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Amira Nature Fds has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Amira Nature Fds 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Amira Nature Fds has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Amira Nature Fds 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Amira Nature Fds is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.
High brand equity
– Amira Nature Fds has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Amira Nature Fds to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Amira Nature Fds in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Amira Nature Fds has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Amira Nature Fds to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Amira Nature Fds in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Amira Nature Fds | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Amira Nature Fds are -
Skills based hiring in Food Processing industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Amira Nature Fds 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Amira Nature Fds is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Amira Nature Fds needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Amira Nature Fds to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Amira Nature Fds 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. Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Amira Nature Fds has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Employees’ less understanding of Amira Nature Fds strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Amira Nature Fds 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds lucrative customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Amira Nature Fds 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Amira Nature Fds needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Amira Nature Fds needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Food Processing industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Amira Nature Fds can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Amira Nature Fds is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on Amira Nature Fds ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Amira Nature Fds 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.
Amira Nature Fds Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Amira Nature Fds are -
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. Amira Nature Fds 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. Amira Nature Fds 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 Food Processing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Amira Nature Fds can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Amira Nature Fds 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Amira Nature Fds 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.
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. Amira Nature Fds can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Amira Nature Fds 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 Food Processing industry.
Manufacturing automation
– Amira Nature Fds can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Food Processing sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Amira Nature Fds to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Amira Nature Fds to increase its market reach. Amira Nature Fds 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Amira Nature Fds 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Amira Nature Fds has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Amira Nature Fds to build a more holistic ecosystem for Amira Nature Fds products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Amira Nature Fds can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Amira Nature Fds External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Amira Nature Fds are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Amira Nature Fds is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Amira Nature Fds 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.
Increasing wage structure of Amira Nature Fds
– 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 Amira Nature Fds.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Amira Nature Fds has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Amira Nature Fds 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Amira Nature Fds 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.
Environmental challenges
– Amira Nature Fds 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. Amira Nature Fds can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Amira Nature Fds 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.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Amira Nature Fds with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing sector.
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. Amira Nature Fds 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. Amira Nature Fds can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Amira Nature Fds.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Amira Nature Fds Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds 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 Amira Nature Fds needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.