Tipiak (TIPK) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Tipiak (France)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Tipiak is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc

---

---

---

---

Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Tipiak

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Tipiak can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Tipiak, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Tipiak 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 Tipiak can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Tipiak
2. Improving business portfolio management of Tipiak
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in France
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Tipiak

---

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

The strengths of Tipiak are -

High brand equity

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

Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry

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

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Tipiak 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.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry

– Tipiak has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Tipiak to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Tipiak to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Tipiak has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Tipiak 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.

Digital Transformation in Food Processing industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Tipiak digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Tipiak 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.

Analytics focus

– Tipiak 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 France 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.

Learning organization

- Tipiak 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 Tipiak is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Tipiak emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Tipiak in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Tipiak is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in France. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in France. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

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

Ability to lead change in Food Processing

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

---

---

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

The weaknesses of Tipiak are -

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Tipiak, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Food Processing industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Tipiak 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 Tipiak can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Tipiak is planning to shift buying processes online.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Tipiak 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 Tipiak lucrative customers.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Tipiak 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.

Skills based hiring in Food Processing industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Tipiak 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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Tipiak 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.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Tipiak has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Food Processing industry over the last five years. Tipiak 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.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Tipiak 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. Tipiak should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

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 Tipiak supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Tipiak is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Tipiak vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Tipiak 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.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of France, Tipiak needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

---

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

The opportunities of Tipiak are -

Reforming the budgeting process

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

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Tipiak 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 Tipiak to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Finding new ways to collaborate

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

Buying journey improvements

– Tipiak 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.

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. Tipiak 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. Tipiak 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.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Tipiak 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.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Tipiak 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Tipiak can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Tipiak operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Food Processing sector.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Tipiak 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.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Tipiak 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Tipiak 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 Tipiak to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Tipiak to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Developing new processes and practices

– Tipiak can develop new processes and procedures in Food Processing industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.

Better consumer reach

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

---

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

The threats of Tipiak are -

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Tipiak 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 Tipiak prominent markets.

Increasing wage structure of Tipiak

– 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 Tipiak.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Tipiak 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 Tipiak in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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

Barriers of entry lowering

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

Consumer confidence and its impact on Tipiak 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.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Tipiak has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Food Processing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Tipiak 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.

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. Tipiak 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. Tipiak needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Tipiak 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 Tipiak is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Environmental challenges

– Tipiak 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. Tipiak can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Food Processing industry.

---

Weighted SWOT Analysis of Tipiak Template, Example

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

--- ---