Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Noble Romans Inc is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, technology disruption, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Noble Romans Inc can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Noble Romans Inc, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Noble Romans Inc 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 Noble Romans Inc can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Noble Romans Inc
2. Improving business portfolio management of Noble Romans Inc
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Restaurants sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Noble Romans Inc
Strengths of Noble Romans Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Noble Romans Inc are -
Organizational Resilience of Noble Romans Inc
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Noble Romans Inc does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Innovation driven organization
– Noble Romans Inc is one of the most innovative firm in Restaurants sector.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Restaurants industry
– Noble Romans Inc has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Noble Romans Inc to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Restaurants industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Noble Romans Inc to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Noble Romans Inc comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Restaurants 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Noble Romans Inc has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Restaurants industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Noble Romans Inc have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Noble Romans Inc 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 Restaurants 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 Noble Romans Inc in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Noble Romans Inc has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Noble Romans Inc to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to lead change in Restaurants
– Noble Romans Inc is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Restaurants industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Noble Romans Inc in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Noble Romans Inc 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 Noble Romans Inc is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Noble Romans Inc emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Restaurants industry
– Noble Romans Inc is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Restaurants industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Noble Romans Inc digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Noble Romans Inc 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Noble Romans Inc has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Noble Romans Inc 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.
Weaknesses of Noble Romans Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Noble Romans Inc are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Noble Romans Inc is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Noble Romans Inc to provide better information regarding Restaurants products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Restaurants industry, Noble Romans Inc 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Noble Romans Inc has some of the most successful models in the Restaurants industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Noble Romans Inc should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
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 Noble Romans Inc supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Noble Romans Inc is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Noble Romans Inc vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Noble Romans Inc is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Restaurants industry, but Noble Romans Inc needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Noble Romans Inc to focus more on services in the Restaurants industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Restaurants industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Noble Romans Inc 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 Restaurants industry.
High dependence on Noble Romans Inc ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Noble Romans Inc still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Restaurants industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Noble Romans Inc has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Noble Romans Inc is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Restaurants industry in last five years.
Need for greater diversity
– Noble Romans Inc 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Noble Romans Inc 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 Restaurants industry using digital technology.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Noble Romans Inc has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Restaurants industry over the last five years. Noble Romans Inc 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.
Noble Romans Inc Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Noble Romans Inc are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Noble Romans Inc can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Noble Romans Inc operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Restaurants sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Noble Romans Inc 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Noble Romans Inc 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Noble Romans Inc is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Noble Romans Inc can utilize new technology in the field of Restaurants industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Restaurants industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Noble Romans Inc can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Noble Romans Inc 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Noble Romans Inc can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Restaurants 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Restaurants industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Noble Romans Inc 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. Noble Romans Inc 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Restaurants industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Noble Romans Inc in the Restaurants industry. Now Noble Romans Inc can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Noble Romans Inc can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Developing new processes and practices
– Noble Romans Inc can develop new processes and procedures in Restaurants 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. Noble Romans Inc can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Noble Romans Inc 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.
Threats Noble Romans Inc External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Noble Romans Inc are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Noble Romans Inc 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 Restaurants industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Noble Romans Inc has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Restaurants industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Noble Romans Inc needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Restaurants 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Noble Romans Inc 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 Restaurants industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Noble Romans Inc
– 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 Noble Romans Inc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Noble Romans Inc 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Restaurants industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Noble Romans Inc 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 Noble Romans Inc in the Restaurants sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Noble Romans Inc in Restaurants industry. The Restaurants 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Noble Romans Inc may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Restaurants sector.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Restaurants industry are lowering. It can presents Noble Romans Inc with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Restaurants sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Noble Romans Inc 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 Restaurants industry and other sectors.
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.
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. Noble Romans Inc needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Restaurants industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Noble Romans Inc Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Noble Romans Inc 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 Noble Romans Inc 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 Noble Romans Inc 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 Noble Romans Inc 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 Noble Romans Inc needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.