Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Dairy Crest ADR is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, geopolitical disruptions, wage bills are increasing, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing commodity prices,
technology disruption, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Dairy Crest ADR can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Dairy Crest ADR, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Dairy Crest ADR 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 Dairy Crest ADR can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Dairy Crest ADR
2. Improving business portfolio management of Dairy Crest ADR
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Dairy Crest ADR
Strengths of Dairy Crest ADR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Dairy Crest ADR are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Dairy Crest ADR comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Organizational Resilience of Dairy Crest ADR
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Dairy Crest ADR does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Dairy Crest ADR has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Analytics focus
– Dairy Crest ADR 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 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Dairy Crest ADR is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Dairy Crest ADR 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
– Dairy Crest ADR has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Dairy Crest ADR is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Dairy Crest ADR in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Dairy Crest ADR digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Dairy Crest ADR has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Dairy Crest ADR staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Dairy Crest ADR has one of the best training and development program in industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
High brand equity
– Dairy Crest ADR has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Dairy Crest ADR to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses of Dairy Crest ADR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Dairy Crest ADR are -
Employees’ less understanding of Dairy Crest ADR strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Dairy Crest ADR products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Dairy Crest ADR needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Dairy Crest ADR has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Dairy Crest ADR 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 industry using digital technology.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Dairy Crest ADR has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Dairy Crest ADR lucrative customers.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Dairy Crest ADR has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Dairy Crest ADR has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Dairy Crest ADR should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Dairy Crest ADR needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Dairy Crest ADR can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Dairy Crest ADR is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on Dairy Crest ADR ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Dairy Crest ADR still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Dairy Crest ADR has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Dairy Crest ADR is just above the industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Dairy Crest ADR Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Dairy Crest ADR are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Dairy Crest ADR has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Dairy Crest ADR to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Dairy Crest ADR to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Dairy Crest ADR is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Dairy Crest ADR can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Dairy Crest ADR 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 industry.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Dairy Crest ADR to increase its market reach. Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Dairy Crest ADR can develop new processes and procedures in 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Dairy Crest ADR can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Dairy Crest ADR 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 Dairy Crest ADR can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Dairy Crest ADR 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. Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Dairy Crest ADR to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Dairy Crest ADR has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Dairy Crest ADR to build a more holistic ecosystem for Dairy Crest ADR products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Dairy Crest ADR External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Dairy Crest ADR are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Dairy Crest ADR may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of 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.
Increasing wage structure of Dairy Crest ADR
– 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 Dairy Crest ADR.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Dairy Crest ADR is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Dairy Crest ADR has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Dairy Crest ADR needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Dairy Crest ADR 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 industry and other sectors.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Dairy Crest ADR 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 industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Dairy Crest ADR 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Dairy Crest ADR with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the 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. Dairy Crest ADR needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Dairy Crest ADR can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Dairy Crest ADR 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. Dairy Crest ADR can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the 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. Dairy Crest ADR 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 Dairy Crest ADR Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Dairy Crest ADR 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 Dairy Crest ADR 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 Dairy Crest ADR 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 Dairy Crest ADR 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 Dairy Crest ADR needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
