Indraprastha Gas (IGAS) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Natural Gas Utilities
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Indraprastha Gas (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Indraprastha Gas is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Indraprastha Gas can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Indraprastha Gas, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Indraprastha Gas 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 Indraprastha Gas can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Indraprastha Gas
2. Improving business portfolio management of Indraprastha Gas
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Natural Gas Utilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Indraprastha Gas
Strengths of Indraprastha Gas | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Indraprastha Gas are -
Learning organization
- Indraprastha Gas 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 Indraprastha Gas is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Indraprastha Gas emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Indraprastha Gas has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Indraprastha Gas staying ahead in the Natural Gas Utilities industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management in the Natural Gas Utilities industry
– Indraprastha Gas is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Indraprastha Gas 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 of Indraprastha Gas comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Natural Gas Utilities 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 Indraprastha Gas in Natural Gas Utilities industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Indraprastha Gas has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Indraprastha Gas 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.
Training and development
– Indraprastha Gas has one of the best training and development program in Utilities industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Indraprastha Gas in the Utilities sector have low bargaining power. Indraprastha Gas has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Indraprastha Gas to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to lead change in Natural Gas Utilities
– Indraprastha Gas is one of the leading players in the Natural Gas Utilities industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Natural Gas Utilities industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Indraprastha Gas in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– Indraprastha Gas has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Indraprastha Gas to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Natural Gas Utilities industry
– Indraprastha Gas has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Indraprastha Gas to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Natural Gas Utilities industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Indraprastha Gas to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses of Indraprastha Gas | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Indraprastha Gas are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Indraprastha Gas has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Natural Gas Utilities industry over the last five years. Indraprastha Gas 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.
Skills based hiring in Natural Gas Utilities industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Indraprastha Gas 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, Indraprastha Gas 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Indraprastha Gas is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Indraprastha Gas to provide better information regarding Natural Gas Utilities products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Indraprastha Gas is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, but Indraprastha Gas needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Indraprastha Gas to focus more on services in the Natural Gas Utilities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Indraprastha Gas, in the dynamic environment of Natural Gas Utilities industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Indraprastha Gas has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Indraprastha Gas is just above the Natural Gas Utilities industry average. It 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.
High dependence on Indraprastha Gas ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Indraprastha Gas still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Natural Gas Utilities industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Indraprastha Gas has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Natural Gas Utilities industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Indraprastha Gas 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Indraprastha Gas, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Natural Gas Utilities industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Indraprastha Gas 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.
Indraprastha Gas Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Indraprastha Gas are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Indraprastha Gas 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Indraprastha Gas can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Natural Gas Utilities sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Indraprastha Gas can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Indraprastha Gas operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Natural Gas Utilities sector.
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 Indraprastha Gas 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Indraprastha Gas has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Natural Gas Utilities industry. This can help Indraprastha Gas to build a more holistic ecosystem for Indraprastha Gas products in the Natural Gas Utilities industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Indraprastha Gas 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Indraprastha Gas 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Indraprastha Gas 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 Indraprastha Gas to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Natural Gas Utilities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Indraprastha Gas 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. Indraprastha Gas 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Natural Gas Utilities industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Indraprastha Gas in the Natural Gas Utilities industry. Now Indraprastha Gas can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Natural Gas Utilities industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Indraprastha Gas can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Buying journey improvements
– Indraprastha Gas can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Natural Gas Utilities industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Indraprastha Gas in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Indraprastha Gas External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Indraprastha Gas are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Indraprastha Gas has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Natural Gas Utilities industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Indraprastha Gas needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Indraprastha Gas may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Natural Gas Utilities sector.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Indraprastha Gas business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Indraprastha Gas needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Natural Gas Utilities industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Indraprastha Gas in Natural Gas Utilities industry. The Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Indraprastha Gas is facing in Natural Gas Utilities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Indraprastha Gas 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 Indraprastha Gas prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Indraprastha Gas 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Natural Gas Utilities industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Indraprastha Gas can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Indraprastha Gas 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.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Environmental challenges
– Indraprastha Gas 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. Indraprastha Gas can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Natural Gas Utilities industry.
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 Indraprastha Gas in the Natural Gas Utilities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Indraprastha Gas Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Indraprastha Gas 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 Indraprastha Gas 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 Indraprastha Gas 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 Indraprastha Gas 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 Indraprastha Gas needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.