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 government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing energy prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing commodity prices, 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 -
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.
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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Indraprastha Gas 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Digital Transformation in Natural Gas Utilities industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Indraprastha Gas digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Indraprastha Gas has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Indraprastha Gas is one of the leading players in the Natural Gas Utilities industry in India. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in India. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Diverse revenue streams
– Indraprastha Gas is present in almost all the verticals within the Natural Gas Utilities industry. This has provided Indraprastha Gas 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Indraprastha Gas has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Natural Gas Utilities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Indraprastha Gas have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Indraprastha Gas
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Indraprastha Gas does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses of Indraprastha Gas | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Indraprastha Gas are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Indraprastha Gas needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Natural Gas Utilities industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Indraprastha Gas can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Indraprastha Gas is planning to shift buying processes online.
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.
Employees’ less understanding of Indraprastha Gas strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Indraprastha Gas 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.
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.
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 dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Indraprastha Gas supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Indraprastha Gas is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Indraprastha Gas vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of India, Indraprastha Gas needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Indraprastha Gas has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Natural Gas Utilities industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Indraprastha Gas has some of the most successful models in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Indraprastha Gas should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
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.
Indraprastha Gas Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Indraprastha Gas are -
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.
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.
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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Indraprastha Gas is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Indraprastha Gas can utilize new technology in the field of Natural Gas Utilities industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Indraprastha Gas 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Indraprastha Gas can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Indraprastha Gas has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Natural Gas Utilities sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Indraprastha Gas to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Indraprastha Gas to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Indraprastha Gas 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry.
Threats Indraprastha Gas External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Indraprastha Gas are -
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.
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 Indraprastha Gas.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Indraprastha Gas 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry and other sectors.
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.
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.
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.
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. Indraprastha Gas needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Natural Gas Utilities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Indraprastha Gas 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry.
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.
