Seafarms (SFG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Seafarms (Australia)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Seafarms is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Seafarms

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Seafarms can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Seafarms, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Seafarms 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Seafarms can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Seafarms
2. Improving business portfolio management of Seafarms
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Fish/Livestock sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Seafarms

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Strengths of Seafarms | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Seafarms are -

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Seafarms 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.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Seafarms in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Seafarms has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Seafarms to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Strong track record of project management in the Fish/Livestock industry

– Seafarms is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Analytics focus

– Seafarms 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 Fish/Livestock 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.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Seafarms is one of the leading players in the Fish/Livestock 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.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Seafarms has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Fish/Livestock industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Seafarms have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Ability to lead change in Fish/Livestock

– Seafarms is one of the leading players in the Fish/Livestock industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Fish/Livestock industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Seafarms in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Seafarms 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.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Seafarms comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Fish/Livestock 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 brand equity

– Seafarms has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Seafarms to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Training and development

– Seafarms 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.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Seafarms has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Seafarms 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.

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Weaknesses of Seafarms | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Seafarms are -

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Fish/Livestock industry, Seafarms 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.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Seafarms is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Seafarms to provide better information regarding Fish/Livestock products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential 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 Seafarms supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Seafarms is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Seafarms vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

High dependence on Seafarms ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Seafarms still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Fish/Livestock industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Seafarms has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Seafarms is just above the Fish/Livestock 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.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Seafarms has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Fish/Livestock industry over the last five years. Seafarms even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.

Employees’ less understanding of Seafarms strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Seafarms 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 cash cycle compare to competitors

Seafarms has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Fish/Livestock industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Seafarms has some of the most successful models in the Fish/Livestock industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Seafarms should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Seafarms is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Fish/Livestock industry, but Seafarms needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Seafarms to focus more on services in the Fish/Livestock industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Seafarms needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Fish/Livestock industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Seafarms can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Seafarms is planning to shift buying processes online.

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Seafarms Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Seafarms are -

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Seafarms can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Buying journey improvements

– Seafarms can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Fish/Livestock 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 Seafarms 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.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Seafarms 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 Fish/Livestock industry.

Loyalty marketing

– Seafarms 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.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Fish/Livestock industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Seafarms 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. Seafarms 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Seafarms can develop new processes and procedures in Fish/Livestock 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.

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 Seafarms 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.

Manufacturing automation

– Seafarms can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Fish/Livestock 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.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Fish/Livestock industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Seafarms in the Fish/Livestock industry. Now Seafarms can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Fish/Livestock industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Seafarms can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Seafarms 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 Seafarms to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Seafarms to increase its market reach. Seafarms 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.

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Threats Seafarms External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Seafarms are -

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Fish/Livestock industry are lowering. It can presents Seafarms with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Fish/Livestock sector.

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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Seafarms 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 Fish/Livestock 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 Seafarms.

Environmental challenges

– Seafarms 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. Seafarms can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Fish/Livestock industry.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Seafarms has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Fish/Livestock industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Seafarms needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Fish/Livestock 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.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Seafarms in Fish/Livestock industry. The Fish/Livestock 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.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Seafarms 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 Fish/Livestock industry and other sectors.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Seafarms 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.

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 Seafarms business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

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. Seafarms 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.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Seafarms may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Fish/Livestock sector.

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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Seafarms Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Seafarms 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 Seafarms 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 Seafarms 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 Seafarms 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 Seafarms needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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