Swot Analysis of "Enman Oil, Inc. (E)" written by David F. Hawkins includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Enman Debt facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Enman Oil, Inc. (E) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Business law, Financial management and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Enman Oil, Inc. (E) casestudy better are - – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Enman Oil, Inc. (E)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Enman Oil, Inc. (E) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Enman Debt, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Enman Debt 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 Enman Oil, Inc. (E) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Enman Oil, Inc. (E) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Enman Debt
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Enman Debt
Strengths Enman Oil, Inc. (E) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Enman Debt in Enman Oil, Inc. (E) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Enman Debt has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Enman Debt 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 lead change in Finance & Accounting field
– Enman Debt is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Enman Debt in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Enman Debt has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Enman Debt 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Enman Debt 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Enman Debt is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Enman Debt has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Enman Oil, Inc. (E) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Enman Debt 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 Enman Debt is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Enman Oil, Inc. (E) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Enman Debt has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Enman Oil, Inc. (E) Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Enman Debt is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Enman Oil, Inc. (E) case study 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Enman Debt in the sector have low bargaining power. Enman Oil, Inc. (E) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Enman Debt to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Enman Debt is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Enman Oil, Inc. (E) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Weaknesses Enman Oil, Inc. (E) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Enman Oil, Inc. (E) are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E), is just above the industry average. Enman Debt needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Enman Debt 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E), it seems that the employees of Enman Debt 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, David F. Hawkins suggests that, Enman Debt 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 industry.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Enman Debt 's lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Enman Debt has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Enman Oil, Inc. (E) HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Enman Debt has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Enman Debt, firm in the HBR case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Enman Debt has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Enman Oil, Inc. (E) should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Enman Oil, Inc. (E) HBR case study mentions - Enman Debt takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Enman Debt 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 industry using digital technology.
Opportunities Enman Oil, Inc. (E) | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) are -
Loyalty marketing
– Enman Debt 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Enman Debt can develop new processes and procedures in Finance & Accounting industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Enman Debt to increase its market reach. Enman Debt 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Enman Debt 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Enman Debt is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Enman Oil, Inc. (E) case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Enman Debt in the consumer business. Now Enman Debt can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Finance & Accounting industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Enman Debt 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. Enman Debt 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.
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 Enman Debt 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Enman Debt in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Finance & Accounting segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Enman Debt can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Enman Debt can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Enman Oil, Inc. (E) suggest that firm 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Enman Debt has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Enman Debt to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Enman Debt 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.
Threats Enman Oil, Inc. (E) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Enman Debt 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Enman Debt 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 the 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 Enman Debt in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Enman Debt 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 prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Finance & Accounting field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Enman Debt can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Enman Debt needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Enman Debt in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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
– Enman Debt 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. Enman Debt can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Enman Debt 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 field.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Enman Debt is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E), Enman Debt may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Finance & Accounting .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Enman Debt with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Enman Oil, Inc. (E) Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) 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 the case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) 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 the Harvard case study Enman Oil, Inc. (E) 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 Enman Oil, Inc. (E) is 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 Enman Debt needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.