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 – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, 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 -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Gujarat Mineral in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Gujarat Mineral has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Gujarat Mineral to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Gujarat Mineral comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Metal Mining 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Gujarat Mineral is present in almost all the verticals within the Metal Mining industry. This has provided Gujarat Mineral 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Gujarat Mineral is one of the most innovative firm in Metal Mining sector.
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.
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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Metal Mining industry
– Gujarat Mineral has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Gujarat Mineral to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Metal Mining industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Gujarat Mineral to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
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.
Weaknesses of Gujarat Mineral | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Gujarat Mineral are -
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.
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.
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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Gujarat Mineral, in the dynamic environment of Metal Mining industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Gujarat Mineral has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
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.
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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Metal Mining industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Gujarat Mineral 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 Metal Mining industry.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Gujarat Mineral is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Metal Mining industry, but Gujarat Mineral needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Gujarat Mineral to focus more on services in the Metal Mining industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on Gujarat Mineral ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Gujarat Mineral still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Metal Mining industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Gujarat Mineral has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
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.
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.
Gujarat Mineral Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Gujarat Mineral are -
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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Gujarat Mineral 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.
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.
Buying journey improvements
– Gujarat Mineral can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Metal Mining 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.
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 Gujarat Mineral 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Gujarat Mineral 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.
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.
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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Gujarat Mineral is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Gujarat Mineral can utilize new technology in the field of Metal Mining industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
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.
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.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Gujarat Mineral can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Gujarat Mineral External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Gujarat Mineral are -
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Gujarat Mineral in the Metal Mining sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Gujarat Mineral 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 Metal Mining industry.
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.
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.
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. Gujarat Mineral 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.
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.