Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
wage bills are increasing, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Food Processing sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture
Strengths of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture in Food Processing industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management in the Food Processing industry
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is present in almost all the verticals within the Food Processing industry. This has provided Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Organizational Resilience of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Training and development
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture has one of the best training and development program in Consumer/Non-Cyclical industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Learning organization
- Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Food Processing industry
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Food Processing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture in the Consumer/Non-Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to lead change in Food Processing
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is one of the leading players in the Food Processing industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Food Processing industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Food Processing industry, Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Food Processing industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture lucrative customers.
High dependence on Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Food Processing industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Food Processing industry, but Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture to focus more on services in the Food Processing industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture, in the dynamic environment of Food Processing industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture, 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.
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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Food Processing industry. This can help Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture to build a more holistic ecosystem for Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture products in the Food Processing industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
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. Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Food Processing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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. Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture in the Food Processing industry. Now Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Food Processing industry are lowering. It can presents Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture in the Food Processing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Food Processing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture prominent markets.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Food Processing industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture is facing in Food Processing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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.
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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture 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 Lanzhou Zhuangyuan Pasture needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.