Colabor Group Inc. (GCL) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Food Processing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Colabor Group Inc. (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Colabor Group Inc. is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing commodity prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
technology disruption, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Colabor Group Inc.
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Colabor Group Inc. can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Colabor Group Inc., and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Colabor Group 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 Colabor Group Inc. can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Colabor Group Inc.
2. Improving business portfolio management of Colabor Group Inc.
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Canada
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Colabor Group Inc.
Strengths of Colabor Group Inc. | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Colabor Group Inc. are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Colabor Group Inc. 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 Colabor Group Inc. have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Colabor Group Inc. has one of the best training and development program in Consumer/Non-Cyclical 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.
Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Colabor Group Inc. digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Colabor Group 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.
Learning organization
- Colabor Group 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 Colabor Group Inc. is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Colabor Group Inc. emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Colabor Group Inc. is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in Canada. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Canada. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– Colabor Group Inc. is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry
– Colabor Group Inc. has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Colabor Group Inc. to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Colabor Group Inc. to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Colabor Group 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Colabor Group Inc. 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Colabor Group Inc. has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Colabor Group 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.
Analytics focus
– Colabor Group 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 Food Processing industry. The technology infrastructure of Canada 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Colabor Group Inc. 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.
Weaknesses of Colabor Group Inc. | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Colabor Group Inc. are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Colabor Group Inc. 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Colabor Group 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Colabor Group Inc. products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Colabor Group Inc. needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Colabor Group Inc. 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Canada, Colabor Group 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 Food Processing industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Colabor Group 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 Food Processing industry using digital technology.
Employees’ less understanding of Colabor Group Inc. strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Colabor Group Inc. 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 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 Colabor Group Inc. supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Colabor Group Inc. is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Colabor Group Inc. vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Colabor Group Inc. 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 Colabor Group Inc. lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Colabor Group Inc., in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Colabor Group Inc. has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Colabor Group Inc. 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. Colabor Group Inc. should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Colabor Group Inc. Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Colabor Group Inc. are -
Buying journey improvements
– Colabor Group Inc. 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Colabor Group Inc. 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 Colabor Group Inc. to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Colabor Group 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
– Colabor Group 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Colabor Group 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Colabor Group Inc. 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 Colabor Group Inc. to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Colabor Group Inc. to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Developing new processes and practices
– Colabor Group Inc. 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Colabor Group Inc. 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 Colabor Group Inc. to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Colabor Group Inc. 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Colabor Group Inc. is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Colabor Group Inc. can utilize new technology in the field of Food Processing industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Colabor Group Inc. has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Colabor Group Inc. to build a more holistic ecosystem for Colabor Group Inc. products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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 Colabor Group Inc. 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.
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. Colabor Group 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. Colabor Group 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.
Threats Colabor Group Inc. External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Colabor Group Inc. are -
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.
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 Colabor Group Inc..
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Colabor Group Inc. 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 Colabor Group Inc. prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Colabor Group 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Colabor Group 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.
Environmental challenges
– Colabor Group Inc. 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. Colabor Group Inc. can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.
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 Colabor Group Inc. business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Colabor Group Inc. is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Colabor Group 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 Food Processing industry regulations.
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. Colabor Group Inc. 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Colabor Group Inc. has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Colabor Group Inc. 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.
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. Colabor Group Inc. needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing 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 Colabor Group Inc. Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Colabor Group 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 Colabor Group 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 Colabor Group 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 Colabor Group 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 Colabor Group Inc. needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.