Reference no: EM132234411

The Panera Bread Company is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Panera Bread Company maintains its dominant position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis- Panera bread company strengths – Company is highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Superb Performance in new markets – Panera Bread Company has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Panera Bread Company products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market. Highly successful at go to market strategies for its products. Strong Free Cash Flow – Panera Bread Company has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects. Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks. Panera bread company weaknesses- 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 Panera Bread Company Limited success outside core business – Even though Panera Bread Company is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture. There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market. High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Panera Bread Company has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees. Panera bread company opportunities – Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Panera Bread Company. New trends in the consumer behaviour can open up new market for the Panera Bread Company. It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too. The new technology provides an opportunity to Panera Bread Company to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Panera Bread Company an opportunity to enter a new emerging market. New customers from online channel – Over the past few years the company has invested vast sum of money into the online platform. Panera bread company threats- 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. New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories. 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.

Question : Based on the identified weaknesses, market opportunities and external threats above, list and justify two key strategic issues. These might be different from those identified by the managers( minimum 200 word)