Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Bright Dairy & Food is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Bright Dairy & Food
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Bright Dairy & Food can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Bright Dairy & Food, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Bright Dairy & 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 Bright Dairy & Food can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Bright Dairy & Food
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bright Dairy & Food
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Bright Dairy & Food
Strengths of Bright Dairy & Food | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Bright Dairy & Food are -
High brand equity
– Bright Dairy & Food has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Bright Dairy & Food to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Innovation driven organization
– Bright Dairy & Food is one of the most innovative firm in Food Processing sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Bright Dairy & Food is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in China. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in China. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Bright Dairy & 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 Bright Dairy & Food in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Food Processing
– Bright Dairy & Food is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Food Processing industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Bright Dairy & Food in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Bright Dairy & Food digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Bright Dairy & 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Training and development
– Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Bright Dairy & Food 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 Bright Dairy & Food have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry
– Bright Dairy & Food has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Bright Dairy & Food to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Bright Dairy & Food to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Bright Dairy & Food in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Bright Dairy & Food has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Bright Dairy & Food to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Bright Dairy & Food | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Bright Dairy & Food are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Bright Dairy & Food needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Food Processing industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Bright Dairy & Food can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Bright Dairy & Food is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Bright Dairy & 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Bright Dairy & Food strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Skills based hiring in Food Processing industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Bright Dairy & Food 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Bright Dairy & Food products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Bright Dairy & Food needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Bright Dairy & Food, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Bright Dairy & Food 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 Bright Dairy & Food 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. Bright Dairy & Food should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Bright Dairy & 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 Food Processing industry using digital technology.
Need for greater diversity
– Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Bright Dairy & Food Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Bright Dairy & Food are -
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. Bright Dairy & Food can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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. Bright Dairy & 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 Bright Dairy & 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Bright Dairy & Food is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Bright Dairy & Food to increase its market reach. Bright Dairy & Food 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.
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. Bright Dairy & 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. Bright Dairy & 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Bright Dairy & 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Bright Dairy & Food 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 Bright Dairy & Food to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Bright Dairy & 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 Bright Dairy & Food to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Food Processing industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Bright Dairy & Food in the Food Processing industry. Now Bright Dairy & Food can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Bright Dairy & Food can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Bright Dairy & Food operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Bright Dairy & Food 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 Bright Dairy & Food to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Bright Dairy & Food to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Bright Dairy & Food External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Bright Dairy & Food are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Bright Dairy & 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 Food Processing industry and other sectors.
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. Bright Dairy & 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Bright Dairy & Food 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.
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 Bright Dairy & Food.
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. Bright Dairy & Food needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Bright Dairy & Food 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 Bright Dairy & Food prominent markets.
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 Bright Dairy & Food in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Bright Dairy & 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. Bright Dairy & Food can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Bright Dairy & 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 Food Processing industry.
Increasing wage structure of Bright Dairy & Food
– 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 Bright Dairy & Food.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Bright Dairy & Food has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Bright Dairy & Food 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Bright Dairy & Food may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Food Processing sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bright Dairy & Food Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Bright Dairy & 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 Bright Dairy & 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 Bright Dairy & 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 Bright Dairy & 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 Bright Dairy & Food needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
