SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Beijing Sanyuan Foods (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Beijing Sanyuan Foods is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Beijing Sanyuan Foods
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Beijing Sanyuan Foods can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Beijing Sanyuan Foods, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Beijing Sanyuan Foods
2. Improving business portfolio management of Beijing Sanyuan Foods
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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods
Strengths of Beijing Sanyuan Foods | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Beijing Sanyuan Foods are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Food Processing industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Beijing Sanyuan Foods digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Beijing Sanyuan Foods has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Training and development
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Beijing Sanyuan Foods a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Learning organization
- Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Beijing Sanyuan Foods emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Beijing Sanyuan Foods to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Beijing Sanyuan Foods in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Beijing Sanyuan Foods | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Beijing Sanyuan Foods are -
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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Beijing Sanyuan Foods is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Beijing Sanyuan Foods vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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. Beijing Sanyuan Foods should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Beijing Sanyuan Foods is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Beijing Sanyuan Foods to provide better information regarding Food Processing products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Beijing Sanyuan Foods needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Beijing Sanyuan Foods strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Beijing Sanyuan Foods Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Beijing Sanyuan Foods are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Beijing Sanyuan Foods can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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. Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Beijing Sanyuan Foods to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Beijing Sanyuan Foods is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods in the Food Processing industry. Now Beijing Sanyuan Foods can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Beijing Sanyuan Foods External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Beijing Sanyuan Foods are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Beijing Sanyuan Foods is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods prominent markets.
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. Beijing Sanyuan Foods needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Beijing Sanyuan Foods with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Food Processing sector.
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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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.
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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods 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 Beijing Sanyuan Foods needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.