Carrianna (126) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Restaurants
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Carrianna (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Carrianna is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, technology disruption,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Carrianna can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Carrianna, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Carrianna 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 Carrianna can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Carrianna
2. Improving business portfolio management of Carrianna
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Restaurants sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Carrianna
Strengths of Carrianna | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Carrianna are -
High brand equity
– Carrianna has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Carrianna to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Carrianna 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Carrianna is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry in Hong Kong. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Hong Kong. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Digital Transformation in Restaurants industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Carrianna digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Carrianna 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Carrianna comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Restaurants 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Carrianna is present in almost all the verticals within the Restaurants industry. This has provided Carrianna 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Carrianna 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.
Learning organization
- Carrianna 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 Carrianna is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Carrianna emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Restaurants industry
– Carrianna is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to lead change in Restaurants
– Carrianna is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Restaurants industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Carrianna in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Carrianna in Restaurants industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Carrianna has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Restaurants industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Carrianna have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Carrianna | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Carrianna are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Carrianna needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Restaurants industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Carrianna can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Carrianna is planning to shift buying processes online.
Lack of clear differentiation of Carrianna products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Carrianna needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Carrianna has some of the most successful models in the Restaurants industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Carrianna should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on Carrianna ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Carrianna still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Restaurants industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Carrianna has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ less understanding of Carrianna strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Carrianna 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Carrianna, in the dynamic environment of Restaurants industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Carrianna has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Carrianna has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Restaurants industry over the last five years. Carrianna 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Carrianna is one of the leading players in the Restaurants industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Restaurants industry in last five years.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Restaurants industry, Carrianna 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Carrianna 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 Restaurants industry using digital technology.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Carrianna has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Restaurants industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Carrianna Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Carrianna are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Restaurants industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Carrianna can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Carrianna to increase its market reach. Carrianna 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Carrianna in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Restaurants industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Carrianna 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Restaurants industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Carrianna 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. Carrianna 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Carrianna 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 Restaurants industry.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Carrianna has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Restaurants industry. This can help Carrianna to build a more holistic ecosystem for Carrianna products in the Restaurants industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Carrianna can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Carrianna operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Restaurants sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Carrianna can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Carrianna is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Carrianna can utilize new technology in the field of Restaurants industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Carrianna can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Restaurants 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Carrianna 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 Carrianna to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Carrianna 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.
Threats Carrianna External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Carrianna are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Carrianna 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 Restaurants industry.
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 Carrianna business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Carrianna 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.
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 Carrianna.
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.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Carrianna in Restaurants industry. The Restaurants 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.
Environmental challenges
– Carrianna 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. Carrianna can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Restaurants industry.
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. Carrianna needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Restaurants 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, Carrianna may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Restaurants sector.
Increasing wage structure of Carrianna
– 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 Carrianna.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Restaurants industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Carrianna can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Carrianna 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Carrianna Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Carrianna 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 Carrianna 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 Carrianna 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 Carrianna 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 Carrianna needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.