Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Heathrow Nat Food is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, technology disruption, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Heathrow Nat Food
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Heathrow Nat Food can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Heathrow Nat Food, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Heathrow Nat Food 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 Heathrow Nat Food can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Heathrow Nat Food
2. Improving business portfolio management of Heathrow Nat Food
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Business Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Heathrow Nat Food
Strengths of Heathrow Nat Food | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Heathrow Nat Food are -
Learning organization
- Heathrow Nat Food 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 Heathrow Nat Food is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Heathrow Nat Food emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Business Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Heathrow Nat Food digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Analytics focus
– Heathrow Nat Food 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 Business Services 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Heathrow Nat Food in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Heathrow Nat Food has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Heathrow Nat Food to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Heathrow Nat Food is one of the most innovative firm in Business Services sector.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Heathrow Nat Food has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Heathrow Nat Food 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Training and development
– Heathrow Nat Food has one of the best training and development program in Services 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Heathrow Nat Food is one of the leading players in the Business Services 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Heathrow Nat Food in Business Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Heathrow Nat Food is present in almost all the verticals within the Business Services industry. This has provided Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Weaknesses of Heathrow Nat Food | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Heathrow Nat Food are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Heathrow Nat Food is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Business Services industry, but Heathrow Nat Food needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Heathrow Nat Food to focus more on services in the Business Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Heathrow Nat Food is one of the leading players in the Business Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Business Services industry in last five years.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Heathrow Nat Food, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Business Services 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Heathrow Nat Food products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Heathrow Nat Food needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Business Services industry, Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Heathrow Nat Food needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Business Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Heathrow Nat Food can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Heathrow Nat Food is planning to shift buying processes online.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Heathrow Nat Food has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Business Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Heathrow Nat Food is just above the Business Services 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Heathrow Nat Food is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Heathrow Nat Food to provide better information regarding Business Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Heathrow Nat Food 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 Business Services industry using digital technology.
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 Heathrow Nat Food supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Heathrow Nat Food is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Heathrow Nat Food vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Heathrow Nat Food Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Heathrow Nat Food are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Business Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Heathrow Nat Food 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. Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Heathrow Nat Food is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Heathrow Nat Food can utilize new technology in the field of Business Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Heathrow Nat Food 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 Heathrow Nat Food to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Business Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Heathrow Nat Food in the Business Services industry. Now Heathrow Nat Food can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Heathrow Nat Food can develop new processes and procedures in Business Services 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Heathrow Nat Food can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Business Services 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.
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. Heathrow Nat Food can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Heathrow Nat Food has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Business Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Heathrow Nat Food to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Heathrow Nat Food to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Heathrow Nat Food has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Business Services industry. This can help Heathrow Nat Food to build a more holistic ecosystem for Heathrow Nat Food products in the Business Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Heathrow Nat Food 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 Business Services industry.
Threats Heathrow Nat Food External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Heathrow Nat Food are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Heathrow Nat Food 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 Business Services industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Heathrow Nat Food 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. Heathrow Nat Food can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Business Services industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Business Services industry are lowering. It can presents Heathrow Nat Food with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Business Services sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Heathrow Nat Food 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 Business Services industry regulations.
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 Heathrow Nat Food in the Business Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Heathrow Nat Food is facing in Business Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Heathrow Nat Food 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 Business Services industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Heathrow Nat Food has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Business Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Heathrow Nat Food needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Business Services 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.
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.
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. Heathrow Nat Food 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Business Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Heathrow Nat Food can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Heathrow Nat Food needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Business Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Heathrow Nat Food Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Heathrow Nat Food 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 Heathrow Nat Food 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 Heathrow Nat Food 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 Heathrow Nat Food 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 Heathrow Nat Food needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
