The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association
Supplement to case W16178. Alaska's economy had struggled for many years; however, in spring 2014, the Pebble Mine presented an opportunity to revitalize it. There was just one catch; the Pebble deposit was located in the headwaters of one of the richest salmon hatcheries in the world. Corporations, government agencies, and public interest groups clashed during the first few months of 2014 concerning not only whether the Pebble Mine should be developed but also who had the authority to make that decision.
Swot Analysis of "The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association" written by Alan Krause, Lisa Johnson includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Pebble Mine facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Strategy and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing transportation and logistics costs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing energy prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pebble Mine, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pebble Mine 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 The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pebble Mine
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Pebble Mine
Strengths The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pebble Mine in The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association Harvard Business Review case study are -
High brand equity
– Pebble Mine has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Pebble Mine to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Pebble Mine is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Pebble Mine is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Pebble Mine to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Pebble Mine to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Pebble Mine is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Pebble Mine
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Pebble Mine does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Pebble Mine 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 Pebble Mine is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Pebble Mine 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 The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Pebble Mine 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Pebble Mine 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Pebble Mine in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Pebble Mine 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association, it seems that the employees of Pebble Mine 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Pebble Mine is planning to shift buying processes online.
Lack of clear differentiation of Pebble Mine products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Pebble Mine needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association, in the dynamic environment Pebble Mine has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Pebble Mine has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Pebble Mine 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Pebble Mine has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association 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 Pebble Mine has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association HBR case study mentions - Pebble Mine 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Pebble Mine has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Pebble Mine 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Pebble Mine 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.
Opportunities The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association | 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 The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association are -
Buying journey improvements
– Pebble Mine can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Pebble Mine can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Pebble Mine can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Pebble Mine operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
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 Pebble Mine in the consumer business. Now Pebble Mine can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Pebble Mine 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Pebble Mine to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Pebble Mine to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Pebble Mine can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Pebble Mine 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Pebble Mine has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Pebble Mine to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association case study. Pebble Mine can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Pebble Mine can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Pebble Mine 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.
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 Pebble Mine 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Pebble Mine 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. Pebble Mine 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.
Threats The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Pebble Mine 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.
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. Pebble Mine needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Pebble Mine 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Pebble Mine has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Pebble Mine needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Pebble Mine is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Pebble Mine 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.
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 Pebble Mine.
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 Pebble Mine in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Pebble Mine can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Pebble Mine
– 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 Pebble Mine.
Environmental challenges
– Pebble Mine 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. Pebble Mine can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Pebble Mine 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 The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association 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 The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association 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 The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association 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 The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association 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 The Pebble Mine (C): Chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association 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 Pebble Mine needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
