Tinplate Company (TINP) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Iron & Steel
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Tinplate Company (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Tinplate Company is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, technology disruption, there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, wage bills are increasing, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Tinplate Company can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Tinplate Company, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Tinplate Company 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 Tinplate Company can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Tinplate Company
2. Improving business portfolio management of Tinplate Company
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Iron & Steel sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Tinplate Company
Strengths of Tinplate Company | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Tinplate Company are -
Innovation driven organization
– Tinplate Company is one of the most innovative firm in Iron & Steel sector.
Learning organization
- Tinplate Company 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 Tinplate Company is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Tinplate Company emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Tinplate Company 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.
High brand equity
– Tinplate Company has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Tinplate Company to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Tinplate Company
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Tinplate Company does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Tinplate Company 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Iron & Steel industry
– Tinplate Company has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Tinplate Company to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Iron & Steel industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Tinplate Company to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Tinplate Company 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Tinplate Company is one of the leading players in the Iron & Steel 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.
Digital Transformation in Iron & Steel industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Tinplate Company digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Tinplate Company 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Tinplate Company has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Iron & Steel industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Tinplate Company have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Tinplate Company comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Iron & Steel 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.
Weaknesses of Tinplate Company | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Tinplate Company are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of India, Tinplate Company needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Tinplate Company products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Tinplate Company needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Tinplate Company 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 Iron & Steel industry using digital technology.
Employees’ less understanding of Tinplate Company strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Tinplate Company 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Tinplate Company has some of the most successful models in the Iron & Steel industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Tinplate Company should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Tinplate Company, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Iron & Steel 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.
High dependence on Tinplate Company ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Tinplate Company still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Iron & Steel industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Tinplate Company has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Tinplate Company is one of the leading players in the Iron & Steel industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Iron & Steel industry in last five years.
Need for greater diversity
– Tinplate Company 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Iron & Steel industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Tinplate Company 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 Iron & Steel industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Tinplate Company needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Iron & Steel industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Tinplate Company can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Tinplate Company is planning to shift buying processes online.
Tinplate Company Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Tinplate Company are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Tinplate Company can develop new processes and procedures in Iron & Steel 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, Tinplate Company 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 Tinplate Company to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Tinplate Company can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Iron & Steel 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Tinplate Company 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 Iron & Steel industry.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Tinplate Company 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
– Tinplate Company 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Tinplate Company in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Iron & Steel industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Tinplate Company has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Iron & Steel industry. This can help Tinplate Company to build a more holistic ecosystem for Tinplate Company products in the Iron & Steel industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Tinplate Company is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Tinplate Company can utilize new technology in the field of Iron & Steel industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Tinplate Company 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 Tinplate Company to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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 Tinplate Company 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Tinplate Company to increase its market reach. Tinplate Company 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Tinplate Company can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Tinplate Company External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Tinplate Company are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Tinplate Company 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Tinplate Company 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 Iron & Steel industry regulations.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Tinplate Company in Iron & Steel industry. The Iron & Steel 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.
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. Tinplate Company 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 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Iron & Steel industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Tinplate Company can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Tinplate Company may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Iron & Steel sector.
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 Tinplate Company in the Iron & Steel sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Tinplate Company
– 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 Tinplate Company.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Tinplate Company 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 Iron & Steel industry and other sectors.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Tinplate Company has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Iron & Steel industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Tinplate Company needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Iron & Steel 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.
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 Tinplate Company.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Tinplate Company Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Tinplate Company 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 Tinplate Company 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 Tinplate Company 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 Tinplate Company 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 Tinplate Company needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.