Raphael Michel (MLRAM) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Raphael Michel (France)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Raphael Michel is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Raphael Michel

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

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

The strengths of Raphael Michel are -

High brand equity

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

Ability to lead change in Beverages (Alcoholic)

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

Analytics focus

– Raphael Michel 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 Beverages (Alcoholic) 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.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Raphael Michel has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Beverages (Alcoholic) industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Raphael Michel have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

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

Organizational Resilience of Raphael Michel

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Raphael Michel does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Raphael Michel comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Beverages (Alcoholic) 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.

Learning organization

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

Strong track record of project management in the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry

– Raphael Michel 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 Beverages (Alcoholic) industry

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

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Raphael Michel in Beverages (Alcoholic) industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Training and development

– Raphael Michel 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.

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

The weaknesses of Raphael Michel are -

Lack of clear differentiation of Raphael Michel products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Raphael Michel 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 Raphael Michel needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Raphael Michel can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Raphael Michel is planning to shift buying processes online.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at Raphael Michel, in the dynamic environment of Beverages (Alcoholic) industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Raphael Michel has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

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

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Raphael Michel is one of the leading players in the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry in last five years.

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

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Raphael Michel, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Beverages (Alcoholic) 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.

Low market penetration in new markets

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

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Raphael Michel 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.

Skills based hiring in Beverages (Alcoholic) industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Raphael Michel 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 dependence on Raphael Michel ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Raphael Michel still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Beverages (Alcoholic) industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Raphael Michel has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

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

The opportunities of Raphael Michel are -

Loyalty marketing

– Raphael Michel 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, Raphael Michel 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 Raphael Michel to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Raphael Michel has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Beverages (Alcoholic) industry. This can help Raphael Michel to build a more holistic ecosystem for Raphael Michel products in the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

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

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Raphael Michel 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. Raphael Michel 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

– Raphael Michel has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Beverages (Alcoholic) sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Raphael Michel to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Raphael Michel to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

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 Raphael Michel 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Raphael Michel 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, Raphael Michel is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Raphael Michel can utilize new technology in the field of Beverages (Alcoholic) industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Raphael Michel 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.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Beverages (Alcoholic) industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Raphael Michel in the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry. Now Raphael Michel can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Raphael Michel in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Buying journey improvements

– Raphael Michel can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Beverages (Alcoholic) 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.

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

The threats of Raphael Michel are -

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. Raphael Michel needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Increasing wage structure of Raphael Michel

– 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 Raphael Michel.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Raphael Michel 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 Raphael Michel 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 Beverages (Alcoholic) industry and other sectors.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Raphael Michel 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 Beverages (Alcoholic) industry.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Raphael Michel in Beverages (Alcoholic) industry. The Beverages (Alcoholic) 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.

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. Raphael Michel 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.

Environmental challenges

– Raphael Michel 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. Raphael Michel can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Beverages (Alcoholic) industry.

Barriers of entry lowering

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

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Raphael Michel is facing in Beverages (Alcoholic) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

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 Raphael Michel in the Beverages (Alcoholic) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Raphael Michel may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Beverages (Alcoholic) sector.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Beverages (Alcoholic) industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Raphael Michel can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Raphael Michel Template, Example

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

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