Strategic Analysis & Business Strategy 2023-2028 for Northern Foods

Introduction of Strategic Analysis & Business Strategy 2023-2028 for Northern Foods

Part 1

Northern Foods is a major food manufacturer in the United Kingdom that has made its name and chance through almost creating the superstore prepared meal. The company's focus is on serving the most important retailers and has a strong marketplace position as the provider of high superiority freezing foods beneath their retail names. The company also has booming brands in frozen food, biscuits, and salty products. The company foods have the standing of being the most characteristic, daring, and booming firm in the UK, with a path record of stable, reputable growth. The company’s mission is to supply highly superior procedure products at a competitive price using fresh produce and by applying suitable processing technology (Ragazou, 2021). The company’s vision by 2023 is to be a profitable company manufacturing high-quality processed food products, and tomato paste and providing sustainable income for society.

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The report is made to discuss strategic analysis of northern foods and it will also discuss various internal and external factors affecting the business. A report will be made to develop an understanding of SWOT and TWOS analysis which will help the company to analyze its strength and weakness. To achieve the objective of the report SMART objectives will be analyzed to give KPIs for the new strategy ( Filippis, et. al. 2021). The report will highlight a broad overview of the strategy 2023-2028, followed by a section that should comprise the following for the individual strategy that will help the company to develop and strategic implementation.

Figure 1: Northern foods plc.

(Source: corporate watch, 2015)

Strategic Analysis

Strategic analysis is necessary to arrange a strategic plan for assessment building and superior level functioning of that organization. With the aid of strategic planning, the intention or goals that are situated by the association can be satisfied. The internal analysis starts by assessing the presence of the business. This includes assessing the possible of a company and its ability to grow. The study of the strengths of Northern Foods should be tilting to the market, and focusing on the customer (Geissdoerfer, et. al. 2018). The strengths only create intelligence when they assist the company to accomplish customers’ requirements. The company needs to know about external factors that can obstruct its growth.

External environment analysis

• Political: This factor cooperate a significant position in shaping the factor that can impact Northern Foods plc’s enduring productivity in a definite market. The company is carrying out food in many countries and exposes itself to diverse type of political environments and system risks. Political constancy and significance of the food and beverage distribution in the country's economy are very crucial. The company can face the hazard of services incursion and level of dishonesty in the consumer goods division. The company should also mitigate the risk of bureaucracy and disturbance in the food and beverage industry by the government, the legal framework for contract enforcement, rational property safety, trade regulations & tariffs connected with consumer goods, flavor trade partners, and anti-trust law connected to the food and infusion industry.
• Economic: Northern foods plc can use the country's economic factors like inflation & industry, growth rate economic indicators like food industry consumer spending to predict the enlargement route of sectors and also that of the organization (Shtal, et. al. 2018). The company should focus on trade rates and the constancy of the congregation country's currency and the efficiency of financial markets. The company should also look at infrastructure quality in the food industry which will help them to gain a competitive advantage in a particular country.
• Socio-cultural: the cultures and means of responsibility things blow the culture of the company in an environment. Various demographics and skill levels of the population and class structure, hierarchy, and authority formation in society affect the business in the long run. The company should also look at various education levels and standards in Northern Food Company.
• Technological: Technology is quickly disturbing a variety of industries transversely the board. In the last 5 years, the manufacturing has been changing rapid, not even providing a probability for the recognized company to deal with the change. Current technological developments by Northern food's competitors have technology's force on manufactured goods offerings, cost configuration in the food industry, value chain structure, and rate of technological distribution.
• Environmental: Diverse markets have dissimilar norms and standards which can impact the productivity of a business in those markets. Even inside a state often states can have dissimilar environmental laws and legal responsibility laws (Christodoulou and Cullinane, 2019). The company before inflowing new markets or start-up a new trade in an existing market should cautiously review the environmental principles that are necessary to function in those markets.
• Legal: This structure and institution are not vigorous sufficient to defend the academic property rights of the company. A firm should cautiously appraise before inflowing such markets as it can direct to the theft of the company’s undisclosed sauce thus the generally cutthroat frame. The company should look at anti-trust laws in the food industry and various discrimination laws, copyright, patent, and consumer protection acts.

Internal Analysis

It involves identifying the objectives of the firm’s business and identifying the diverse factors that are constructive and averse to achieving those objectives. SWOT analysis can help the case company to understand weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and possible threats against it. The Northern Foods plc monetary analysis covers the income statement and ratio trend charts with cash flows and balance sheets accessible on a quarterly and annual basis. The report outlines the major financial ratios about edge analysis, productivity, asset income, credit ratios, and the firm's long-term solvency. This sort of firm’s data and information will aid and make stronger the company’s decision-making processes (Oraman, et. al. 2018). The firm also offers high-quality freezing recipe dishes rising and developed products, which comprise a wide range of pasta snacks and meals, Chinese, Indian, and other global dishes, jointly with customary UK specialties.

• Core competencies and resources: the company is striving to comprehend and narrow its actions on what matters most and is of importance to stakeholders and businesses including the environment and society. Alongside suppliers, from big corporations to small-scale farmers The Company is striving to create more equitable, ethical environmentally sustainable supply chain. The company should concentrate on securing human and labor rights, as well as generating social benefits and improving the sustainability of the facilities and farm sites (Capobianco and. al. 2021). The company is reducing carbon emissions from its business operations, making it more efficient energy use and utilizing resources strategies to minimize the impact of providing services to its customers.
• Performance in the workplace: Northern Foods is a highly diverse company that includes many food and ingredient companies as well as its own retail brand. Northern Foods is united in its mission to offer healthy, safe, and inexpensive food that offers an incredible worth the money. The company's financial success is due to the strength of its brands and products, the variety of products and markets and geographical distribution traditional financing, and an organizational strategy that permits quick and flexible decision making.
• Evaluation of service and product: Diversification of product offerings by Northern Foods Company. Northern foods firm includes significant products like frozen food and retail, as well as Agriculture and even ingredients. The wide range of products that the company offers is a representation of the diversification strategy it has adopted that is in accordance with an unconnected structure that allows for diversification (Ali, and. al. 2021). The primary reason for the fact that the business's diversification is called unconnected is due on the characteristics of its products. The wide variety of the items with respect to the dissimilar nature of each fundamentally, they are not connected.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths	Weaknesses
• Good staff performance appraisal • Leading companies in its industry • The majority of the product range in the development phase • Highly booming at go o market approach for its goods. • Dependable suppliers – the corporation has a strong base of consistent suppliers of raw materials that enable the firm to overcome supply chain blockage. • Good returns on capital expenditure –Northern Foods Plc is comparatively booming at the implementation of new projects and generates superior proceeds on capital expenses by building a original income stream (Benzaghta, et. al. 2021). • Strong free cash flows –Northern foods have powerful free cash flows that offer resources to furnish the corporation to expand into new projects.	• Celebrity manufactured goods hitting the decline stage • Staff be short of customer satisfaction focus • Require more assets in inventive technologies. • Known the scale of development and diverse geography the business is planning to increase into. • Northern Foods Plc requires putting more wealth into technology to put together the process across the panel. • Right now the speculation in technology is not equivalenced with the visualization of the company. • Not very superior at manufactured goods order forecasting most important to a senior rate of missed opportunities evaluate to its competitor. The motive why the day's list is highly evaluated by its competitors is that the company is not very good at demand forecasting and thus end up maintaining superior record both channel and in-house. • Financial preparation is not completed properly and resourcefully. The current asset ratio and fluid advantage ratios propose that the corporation can use the currency more competently than what it is responsible for at nearby.
Opportunities • The latest technology offers the business with the chance to adopt a different pricing strategy in the new market. This will help the company to maintain its customers' loyalty with superior services and attract new customers by offering other value-oriented offers. • The green force created by the government allows for the purchase of the products of the company through the state as also federal government contractors. • Lowering the cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices could also reduce the price of the company's products, thereby offering the business to increase its efficiency for the benefit of its customers to increase market share. • Lower value rates transport more constancy in the market and facilitate credit at a inferior attention rate to the consumers of the company.	Threats • No standard supply of modern products: Over its existence, the firm has urbanized frequent goods but those are frequently a comeback to the growth of other company. The supply of innovative goods is not standard thus principal to low and high swing in the sale figure over some time. • Simulation of imitation and small-quality goods is also a threat to Northern Foods Plc’s manufactured goods, particularly in the rising market and low-income markets. • Altering customer business actions from online channels might be a threat to the obtainable physical transportation-determined supply chain model (Quezada, et. al. 2019). • Shortage of accomplished labor force in the convinced global market represents a threat to the stable development of proceeds for Northern Foods in those markets. • Powerful opposition and stable efficiency have enlarged the amount of groups in the business for years which has put descending force on not only productivity but also general sales.

TOWS Analysis

The TOWS analysis follows the strategic option for Northern foods that it can be used to make the most excellent use of its strength, decrease its weaknesses, and reduce the challenge arising out of its threats. It also discusses how the company can take advantage of the obtainable opportunities using its main strengths highlighted in the SWOT analysis.

	Internal Strengths (S) 1. Utilize the powerful brand impartiality it has in the international market to associate with the brands and expand its market occurrence there. The company is in a well-paid market but still, the company has not been able to go through it deeply. 2. Use its technical capability to improve and serve the millennials and to develop its popularity among medium-class customers. 3. Reduce the cost of the process and raw materials throughout the supply chain organization.	Internal Weaknesses (W) 1. Enlarge several stores in the less penetrate markets using diverse store models. 2. Approve a code of conduct for the franchisees to pursue (Rawung, and Salindeho, 2020). 3. Increasing the number of stores globally can decrease some of the competitive stress. 4. Focus on the organization's long-term relations with its key supplier.
External Opportunities (O) 1. Use its internal currency developed and supply chain system and additional key capability to create more low-calorie items which are preferred by the millennial age group known for its physical condition awareness. 2. Use its interior supply chain capability to kind away any outfitted issues face by the franchise (Das, et. al. 2022).	SO "Maxi-Maxi" Strategy • Strategies that use strength to capitalize on opportunities.	WO "Mini-Maxi" Strategy • Strategies that diminish weaknesses by captivating advantage of opportunity.
External Threats (T) 1. Focus on marketing and advertising its goods and product to decrease aggressive stress from other QSR brands. 2. Sustain focus on fulfillment to keep rigid threats minimized. 3. Manufacture and market a diversity of light products to create the finest of fitness-conscious trends.	ST "Maxi-Mini" Strategy • Strategies that use strengths to minimize threats.	WT "Mini-Mini" Strategy • Strategies that reduce weakness and evade threats.

Mission

The company believes in generating whole, healthy food of the uppermost quality that does not include any preservatives. The company's goods give consumers' taste buds a fresh flavor and its flavor combinations and delicious recipes. The company wants customers to enjoy every aroma and taste and the company creates food to appreciate and enjoy. The company always puts customers' requirements and wishes at the center while creating food experiences. Their various tastes and behavior are an infinite source of motivation that inspires them to arrange new delicacies. The company’s mission is to offer food with a purpose, which is the reason for being. The company creates magical moments by putting its soul and heart into each bite. The company uses innovation and food tech proficiency to provide its consumers with increasingly plant-based experiences, delicious, that are superior for consumers and the planet. The company wants to be a part of customers' unforgettable moments and improved their everyday lives by incorporating a unique inheritance into food (Alegre, et. al. 2018). The company brings its strong vision to life by gaining tremendous imminent motivation from its customer's values and needs to develop its offerings mutually with them.

The company activity to defend the self-esteem of each one within and beyond its operations, so that the group who makes products is respected, feels safe, and built-in. The company proudly encourages and defends a culture of fairness, trust, and responsibility that put principles first. The case company is dedicated to embedding honesty into every action. The company also worked with others to influence its global expertise for local good. Through collaboration with its stakeholders, the case company is working to produce a safer, fair working environment and promote a booming, flexible community. The company has an outlook that's long-term to build long-term value for its customers, employees, stakeholders, partners as well as the communities in the community in which they operate. The goal of the company is to achieve long-term sustainable development over the longer term and balance sheets are controlled to ensure ongoing stability in the monetary system, regardless of the state of the financial markets. The company is dedicated to increasing stakeholder value by making sound, strategic, and financially responsible business decisions that result in steady increases in dividends and earnings (Das 2018). The company's goal is to make an ongoing contribution to society and provide customers, suppliers, and communities, customers as well as the natural environment.

Objectives

The company's means of operating consumer and monetarily carefulness paying attention on the durable thoughts has attained enlargement over many days and created long-term rate for its shareholders. The company operates a delegated operating model across business segments including frozen foods, grocery, pizzas, bakery items, and healthy foods. The brand believes in the means to create stable value involving situation objectives from the bottom-up somewhat than the top-down. The brand makes operational decision locally because in its knowledge decision is most victorious when made by the individuals with the best consideration of their clientele and markets (Wannes and Ghannouchi, 2019). This responsibility is extremely motivating the company’s strong restricted management teams and encourages consumerist advancement which drives innovative company thinking.

Superiority is a core constituent of OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) that is significant to most food built-up businesses; though it is often inferior to metrics, like acquiesce and throughput that may offer a grainier look at operational performance and generally product reliability.

Key Performance Indicators enable the company to do the following:

• Follow progress toward targets: When united with the company's goals for business the key performance indicators reveal what they're doing to achieve the goals. By keeping track of the correct KPIs in real-time companies can look at the current data, compare it with a previous period and evaluate how well the business is doing.
• Gain insights into the problems that are being faced: studying the data from KPIs of the company, it can help to increase business insight. If the right KPIs are being monitored the company can look at the data, observe what and when these events occur, and then take corrective actions.
• Compare the performance of your business against benchmarks in the industry Monitoring KPIs can assist the company in measuring the performance of their business when compared to industry benchmarks. Being able to recognize the link between these three manufacturing KPIs is the most valuable asset for any food company.

The objectives of the organization for Northern Foods plc are the short and medium-term objectives and goals that the company establishes to achieve its strategic goals in the long term. The objectives of the company are crucial in determining the allocation of resources in Northern Foods and in influencing the policies, schedules, and procedures that are put into place within the business.

SMART objectives

• Specific: the objectives set by the company are precise and apparent. This helps the company’s employees and managers to maintain and manage focus on the target and the finished results that require to be achieved. In a similar instance, specific objectives help the manager to conclude skill expansion and guidance requirements within their department as well.
• Measurable: Objectives of the company should also be measurable so that all objectives can be tracked for progress (Jelassi and Martínez-López, 2020). This is significant for the company as it helps in assembling deadlines. The part of measurability is additional in objective by adding up scientific criteria for influential development and purpose achievement.
• Attainable: the goals should be attainable and constant in enlarging the ability of the workers and challenging them, it is supposed to remain possible to attain. The objectives at Northern Foods are achievable in that they thrust the workers out of their reassure zones but stay possible to accomplish.
• Realistic: Objectives at Northern Foods Plc are also within reach in that they are realistic. This way that the company sets objectives maintenance given the managerial resources and constraints to be capable to achieve objectives successfully and within time.
• Timely: objectives at Northern foods are also time-bound in that they have a particular start and come to an end date. The appropriateness of the aims helps the company to maintain a sense of importance in workers, and keep them aggravated towards achieving the objective.

For developing the objectives the company should focus on overall business strategies which will facilitate the company in broader purpose and achieve quantifiable objectives and goals. By maintaining in view strategic focus, the company can also maintain immediacy with the vision of the association and work towards the attractive performance of the organization. Objectives at the company should flow from the managerial goals, and work towards helping the corporation and operation in achieving the set goals. The company should also focus on the time restraint present in conditions of reserve present, and the necessity of the association and the industry

The company's being able to get details automatically is the first step to improving its performance. Eventually, there are a lot of developed KPIs. For Food Companies, the three listed beyond can provide the maximum business impact if they can be calculated precisely and then impacted upon review. This includes downtime, throughput, and yield.

Figure 2: performance of food manufactures

(Source: Bryan Sapot, 2019)

Strategy 2023-2028

The food industry in the UK is an international hit industry that is mostly dominated by competitors. Food manufacturing is a completely competitive industry as the barriers to entry are low and there are a lot of rivals each with similar products. The major features that give authority are a company’s ability to compete and increase profitability depending on who their main competitors are.

Strategy Overview

Food technology is rising in food manufacturing to assist decrease the rate of starvation and nourish the world. Agriculture is flattering more automatically through digital and superior technology to manufacture raw materials and food with smart farming. With future international disruption selected as the peak threat to the food industry over the subsequent five years, 42% of respondents chooses that response, more than 6% superior to the subsequent largest threats. Business leaders are familiar with the significance of unexpected, theatrical shifts like that caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Firms will also be penetrating for a way to have additional control over the progress of their products and materials, as on the whole supply chain visibility (Afuah, 2020). Sustainability was chosen by respondents as the peak trend in the food industry to prioritize over the next 5 years, with 38% of participants choosing that option. Better importance on sustainability efforts is also observed as risk mitigation quantifies, as it was the second-most chosen response. The company faces the challenge of transporting food payable to supply chain disruption. With the increasing demand for straight delivery to consumers, as well as grocery and restaurant delivery and meals, knowledge is desirable to track and make sure food is delivered and packaged safely.

Strategic implementation

The survey has selected analytics and big data as the technology and knowledge that will have the maximum impact on the company over the next 5 years. at the same time as there are several barriers holding firms back from extra speed-up modernization as well as limited visibility across the operation and a requirement of awareness of solutions that is pushing past that deliberation and creating a solid digital establishment is more and more necessary for enduring agile, certain and competitive in the fast-paced and dynamic markets of the food industry. An impressive 90% of all respondents report development in key performance indicators (KPIs) as a consequence of their digital transformation hard work. This demonstrates how efficient purpose-built solutions can be in achieving goals and constructing assessable progress as an activity. The rising desire among clientele for the intelligibility of food producer operations and augmented awareness of community health concerns with survey respondents selecting food safety as the peak focus for risk mitigation (Hieu and Nwachukwu, 2019). The company should focus on food safety and innovate its products for facing future challenges in the market.

Conclusion

The report was made to discuss strategic analysis of northern foods and it has also discussed various external and internal factors affecting the business. A report was made to develop an understanding of SWOT and TWOS analysis which helped the company to analyze its weakness and strength. To achieve the objective of the report SMART objectives has be analyzed to give KPIs for the new strategy. The report has also highlighted a broad overview of the strategy 2023-2028, followed by a section which has comprised the following for the individual strategy that has helped the company to develop and strategic implementation.

References

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