Gujarat Mineral (GMDC) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Metal Mining
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Gujarat Mineral (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Gujarat Mineral is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is backlash against globalization, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Gujarat Mineral can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gujarat Mineral, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gujarat Mineral 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 Gujarat Mineral can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Gujarat Mineral
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gujarat Mineral
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Gujarat Mineral
Strengths of Gujarat Mineral | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gujarat Mineral are -
Learning organization
- Gujarat Mineral 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 Gujarat Mineral is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Gujarat Mineral emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Gujarat Mineral has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Gujarat Mineral 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Metal Mining industry
– Gujarat Mineral is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Gujarat Mineral is one of the most innovative firm in Metal Mining sector.
Analytics focus
– Gujarat Mineral is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Metal Mining industry. The technology infrastructure of India is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Gujarat Mineral has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Gujarat Mineral staying ahead in the Metal Mining industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gujarat Mineral has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Metal Mining industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Gujarat Mineral have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Gujarat Mineral 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.
Organizational Resilience of Gujarat Mineral
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Gujarat Mineral does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Gujarat Mineral has one of the best training and development program in Basic Materials 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.
Digital Transformation in Metal Mining industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Gujarat Mineral digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Gujarat Mineral 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Gujarat Mineral in Metal Mining industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Gujarat Mineral | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Gujarat Mineral are -
Skills based hiring in Metal Mining industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Gujarat Mineral 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Gujarat Mineral products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Gujarat Mineral needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Gujarat Mineral has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Gujarat Mineral 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Gujarat Mineral, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Metal Mining 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Gujarat Mineral has some of the most successful models in the Metal Mining industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Gujarat Mineral should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Gujarat Mineral has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Metal Mining industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Metal Mining industry, Gujarat Mineral 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’ less understanding of Gujarat Mineral strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Gujarat Mineral 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Gujarat Mineral has high operating costs in the Metal Mining industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Gujarat Mineral lucrative customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Gujarat Mineral is just above the Metal Mining 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.
Gujarat Mineral Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Gujarat Mineral are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Metal Mining industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Gujarat Mineral 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. Gujarat Mineral 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Gujarat Mineral has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Metal Mining industry. This can help Gujarat Mineral to build a more holistic ecosystem for Gujarat Mineral products in the Metal Mining industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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, Gujarat Mineral can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Gujarat Mineral operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Metal Mining sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Gujarat Mineral 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Gujarat Mineral 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Gujarat Mineral has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Metal Mining sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Gujarat Mineral to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Gujarat Mineral to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Gujarat Mineral in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Metal Mining industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Gujarat Mineral to increase its market reach. Gujarat Mineral 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Gujarat Mineral can develop new processes and procedures in Metal Mining 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Gujarat Mineral can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Gujarat Mineral to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Metal Mining industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Gujarat Mineral can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Gujarat Mineral 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 Metal Mining industry.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gujarat Mineral can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Gujarat Mineral External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Gujarat Mineral are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Gujarat Mineral 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 Metal Mining industry and other sectors.
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 Gujarat Mineral business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Gujarat Mineral
– 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 Gujarat Mineral.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Gujarat Mineral has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Metal Mining industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Gujarat Mineral needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Metal Mining 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Metal Mining industry are lowering. It can presents Gujarat Mineral with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Metal Mining sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Gujarat Mineral is facing in Metal Mining sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Gujarat Mineral 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. Gujarat Mineral can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Metal Mining industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Gujarat Mineral 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.
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. Gujarat Mineral needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Metal Mining industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Gujarat Mineral can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Gujarat Mineral in Metal Mining industry. The Metal Mining 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Gujarat Mineral may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Metal Mining sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Gujarat Mineral 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 Gujarat Mineral prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Gujarat Mineral Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Gujarat Mineral 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 Gujarat Mineral 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 Gujarat Mineral 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 Gujarat Mineral 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 Gujarat Mineral needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
