Central Garden&Pet A (CENTA) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Food Processing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Central Garden&Pet A (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Central Garden&Pet A is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing energy prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Central Garden&Pet A
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Central Garden&Pet A can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Central Garden&Pet A, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Central Garden&Pet 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 Central Garden&Pet A can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Central Garden&Pet A
2. Improving business portfolio management of Central Garden&Pet A
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 Central Garden&Pet A
Strengths of Central Garden&Pet A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Central Garden&Pet A are -
Innovation driven organization
– Central Garden&Pet A is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.
Organizational Resilience of Central Garden&Pet A
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Central Garden&Pet A does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Food Processing
– Central Garden&Pet A 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 Central Garden&Pet A in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Central Garden&Pet A 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 Central Garden&Pet A have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Central Garden&Pet A is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Central Garden&Pet A comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Food Processing 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Central Garden&Pet 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Central Garden&Pet A has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Central Garden&Pet A 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Central Garden&Pet A is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Central Garden&Pet 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Central Garden&Pet A in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Central Garden&Pet A has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Central Garden&Pet A to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Central Garden&Pet 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Central Garden&Pet A 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.
Weaknesses of Central Garden&Pet A | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Central Garden&Pet A are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Central Garden&Pet A is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Food Processing industry in last five years.
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 Central Garden&Pet A supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Central Garden&Pet A is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Central Garden&Pet A vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Central Garden&Pet A, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Food Processing industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Central Garden&Pet A is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Central Garden&Pet A needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Central Garden&Pet A 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, Central Garden&Pet 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 Food Processing industry over the last five years. Central Garden&Pet 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Central Garden&Pet 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Central Garden&Pet A 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 Central Garden&Pet A lucrative customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Central Garden&Pet A has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the Food Processing industry using digital technology.
Skills based hiring in Food Processing industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Central Garden&Pet 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Central Garden&Pet A has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Food Processing industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Central Garden&Pet A 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. Central Garden&Pet A should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Central Garden&Pet A Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Central Garden&Pet A are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Central Garden&Pet 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Central Garden&Pet A 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Central Garden&Pet A to increase its market reach. Central Garden&Pet A 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.
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. Central Garden&Pet A can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Developing new processes and practices
– Central Garden&Pet A 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Central Garden&Pet 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Central Garden&Pet 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 Food Processing industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Central Garden&Pet 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.
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 Central Garden&Pet 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Central Garden&Pet A 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 Central Garden&Pet A to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Central Garden&Pet A 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, Central Garden&Pet 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 Central Garden&Pet 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Central Garden&Pet 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 Central Garden&Pet A to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Central Garden&Pet A can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Central Garden&Pet A operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.
Threats Central Garden&Pet A External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Central Garden&Pet A are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Central Garden&Pet 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 Central Garden&Pet A prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Central Garden&Pet 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 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. Central Garden&Pet 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Central Garden&Pet 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Central Garden&Pet A 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.
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. Central Garden&Pet A can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Central Garden&Pet A in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Central Garden&Pet 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. Central Garden&Pet A can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing 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. Central Garden&Pet A needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Central Garden&Pet A.
Increasing wage structure of Central Garden&Pet 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 Central Garden&Pet A.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Central Garden&Pet A 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.
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 Central Garden&Pet A business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Central Garden&Pet A Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Central Garden&Pet 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 Central Garden&Pet 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 Central Garden&Pet 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 Central Garden&Pet 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 Central Garden&Pet A needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.