Breedon Group Plc SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by Breedon Group Plc managers to do a situational analysis of the company . It is a useful technique to map out the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Breedon Group Plc is facing in its current business environment.

The Breedon Group Plc is one of the leading companies in its industry. Breedon Group Plc maintains its prominent position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis.  SWOT analysis a highly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the firm such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.


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The SWOT Analysis framework facilitates an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Breedon Group Plc to develop four types of strategies:

• SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
• WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
• ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
•  WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The main purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Breedon Group Plc strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Breedon Group Plc SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Breedon Group Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Breedon Group Plc has numerous strengths that help it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of Breedon Group Plc are –

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• Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
• Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.
• Successful track record of integrating complimentary firms through mergers & acquisition. It has successfully integrated number of technology companies in the past few years to streamline its operations and to build a reliable supply chain.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Breedon Group Plc has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Breedon Group Plc just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• Strong distribution network – Over the years Breedon Group Plc has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
• High level of customer satisfaction – the company with its dedicated customer relationship management department has able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction among present customers and good brand equity among the potential customers.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Breedon Group Plc products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
• Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.

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Weakness of Breedon Group Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Breedon Group Plc can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a company can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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• Limited success outside core business – Even though Breedon Group Plc is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Breedon Group Plc needs to put more money in technology to integrate the processes across the board. Right now the investment in technologies is not at par with the vision of the company.
• High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Breedon Group Plc has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
• Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of Breedon Group Plc
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Breedon Group Plc is spending above the industry average on Research and Development, it has not been able to compete with the leading players in the industry in terms of innovation. It has come across as a mature firm looking forward to bring out products based on tested features in the market.
• Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Breedon Group Plc is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
• Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.

Opportunities for Breedon Group Plc – External Strategic Factors

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• The new technology provides an opportunity to Breedon Group Plc to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. It will enable the firm to maintain its loyal customers with great service and lure new customers through other value oriented propositions.
• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Breedon Group Plc.
• Stable free cash flow provides opportunities to invest in adjacent product segments. With more cash in bank the company can invest in new technologies as well as in new products segments. This should open a window of opportunity for Breedon Group Plc in other product categories.
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Breedon Group Plc . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• New customers from online channel – Over the past few years the company has invested vast sum of money into the online platform. This investment has opened new sales channel for Breedon Group Plc. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Breedon Group Plc an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Breedon Group Plc to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.

Threats Breedon Group Plc Facing - External Strategic Factors

• The demand of the highly profitable products is seasonal in nature and any unlikely event during the peak season may impact the profitability of the company in short to medium term.
• As the company is operating in numerous countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in number of markets across the world.
• Intense competition – Stable profitability has increased the number of players in the industry over last two years which has put downward pressure on not only profitability but also on overall sales.
• New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• No regular supply of innovative products – Over the years the company has developed numerous products but those are often response to the development by other players. Secondly the supply of new products is not regular thus leading to high and low swings in the sales number over period of time.
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Breedon Group Plc profitability.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Breedon Group Plc

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Breedon Group Plc

Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.

• Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
• SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
• The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of Breedon Group Plc
• SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
• SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Breedon Group Plc

In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.

This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis Breedon Group Plc managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.

Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of Breedon Group Plc

This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.

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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

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SWOT Worksheet & Template

If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.

References / Citations & Bibliography

• M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
• A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
• O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
• L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
• R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)