SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Clover Corporation Ltd (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Clover Corporation Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Clover Corporation Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Clover Corporation Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Clover Corporation Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Clover Corporation Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Clover Corporation Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Clover Corporation Ltd
Strengths of Clover Corporation Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Clover Corporation Ltd are -
Analytics focus
– Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Australia 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry
– Clover Corporation Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Clover Corporation Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Clover Corporation Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Clover Corporation Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Clover Corporation Ltd staying ahead in the Food Processing industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Clover Corporation Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Clover Corporation Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Clover Corporation Ltd in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Clover Corporation Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Clover Corporation Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Clover Corporation Ltd is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in Australia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Australia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Clover Corporation Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Clover Corporation Ltd 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
– Clover Corporation Ltd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Training and development
– Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Learning organization
- Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Clover Corporation Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Clover Corporation Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Clover Corporation Ltd are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Clover Corporation Ltd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Clover Corporation Ltd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Clover Corporation Ltd is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Clover Corporation Ltd has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Employees’ less understanding of Clover Corporation Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Clover Corporation Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Clover Corporation Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Clover Corporation Ltd is just above the Food Processing 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Clover Corporation Ltd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Clover Corporation Ltd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Clover Corporation Ltd to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd lucrative customers.
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 Clover Corporation Ltd supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Clover Corporation Ltd is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Clover Corporation Ltd vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Clover Corporation Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Clover Corporation Ltd are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
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. Clover Corporation Ltd can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Manufacturing automation
– Clover Corporation Ltd can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Food Processing sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Clover Corporation Ltd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Food Processing industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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 Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
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 Clover Corporation Ltd in the Food Processing industry. Now Clover Corporation Ltd can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Clover Corporation Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Clover Corporation Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Clover Corporation Ltd products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Clover Corporation Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Threats Clover Corporation Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Clover Corporation Ltd are -
Environmental challenges
– Clover Corporation Ltd 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. Clover Corporation Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
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 Clover Corporation Ltd.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Clover Corporation Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Clover Corporation Ltd 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 dependence on third party suppliers
– Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Clover Corporation Ltd 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. Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Food Processing industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Clover Corporation Ltd 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. Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Increasing wage structure of Clover Corporation Ltd
– 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 Clover Corporation Ltd.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Clover Corporation Ltd 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Clover Corporation Ltd is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Clover Corporation Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd 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 Clover Corporation Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
