SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Adelaide Brighton (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Adelaide Brighton is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing commodity prices, increasing energy prices,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Adelaide Brighton
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Adelaide Brighton can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Adelaide Brighton, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Adelaide Brighton 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 Adelaide Brighton can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Adelaide Brighton
2. Improving business portfolio management of Adelaide Brighton
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Construction - Raw Materials sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Adelaide Brighton
Strengths of Adelaide Brighton | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Adelaide Brighton are -
Analytics focus
– Adelaide Brighton 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry. The technology infrastructure of Australia 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Adelaide Brighton has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Construction - Raw Materials industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Adelaide Brighton have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Diverse revenue streams
– Adelaide Brighton is present in almost all the verticals within the Construction - Raw Materials industry. This has provided Adelaide Brighton 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.
High brand equity
– Adelaide Brighton has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Adelaide Brighton to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Construction - Raw Materials industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Adelaide Brighton digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Adelaide Brighton 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
– Adelaide Brighton is one of the leading players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry in Australia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Australia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Adelaide Brighton comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– Adelaide Brighton has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Adelaide Brighton to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Adelaide Brighton to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Adelaide Brighton is one of the most innovative firm in Construction - Raw Materials sector.
Organizational Resilience of Adelaide Brighton
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Adelaide Brighton 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 Adelaide Brighton 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Adelaide Brighton in the Capital Goods sector have low bargaining power. Adelaide Brighton has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Adelaide Brighton to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Adelaide Brighton | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Adelaide Brighton are -
High bargaining power of channel partners in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Adelaide Brighton 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry.
Skills based hiring in Construction - Raw Materials industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Adelaide Brighton 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.
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 Adelaide Brighton supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Adelaide Brighton is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Adelaide Brighton vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Adelaide Brighton 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Adelaide Brighton, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Adelaide Brighton has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Construction - Raw Materials industry over the last five years. Adelaide Brighton 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, Adelaide Brighton 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Adelaide Brighton is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, but Adelaide Brighton needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Adelaide Brighton to focus more on services in the Construction - Raw Materials industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Adelaide Brighton 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Adelaide Brighton needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Construction - Raw Materials industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Adelaide Brighton can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Adelaide Brighton is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on Adelaide Brighton ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Adelaide Brighton still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Construction - Raw Materials industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Adelaide Brighton has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Adelaide Brighton Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Adelaide Brighton are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Adelaide Brighton can develop new processes and procedures in Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Adelaide Brighton 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.
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. Adelaide Brighton can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Adelaide Brighton 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Construction - Raw Materials industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Adelaide Brighton can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Construction - Raw Materials industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Adelaide Brighton 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. Adelaide Brighton 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Adelaide Brighton has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Construction - Raw Materials sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Adelaide Brighton to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Adelaide Brighton to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Adelaide Brighton 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Adelaide Brighton is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Adelaide Brighton can utilize new technology in the field of Construction - Raw Materials industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Adelaide Brighton can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Adelaide Brighton in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Construction - Raw Materials industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Adelaide Brighton 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Adelaide Brighton has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Construction - Raw Materials industry. This can help Adelaide Brighton to build a more holistic ecosystem for Adelaide Brighton products in the Construction - Raw Materials industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Adelaide Brighton External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Adelaide Brighton are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Adelaide Brighton may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Construction - Raw Materials sector.
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 Adelaide Brighton.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Adelaide Brighton
– 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 Adelaide Brighton.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Construction - Raw Materials industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Adelaide Brighton can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Adelaide Brighton in the Construction - Raw Materials sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Adelaide Brighton 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry.
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. Adelaide Brighton 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Construction - Raw Materials industry are lowering. It can presents Adelaide Brighton with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Construction - Raw Materials sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Adelaide Brighton 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 Construction - Raw Materials industry regulations.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Adelaide Brighton 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 Adelaide Brighton prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Adelaide Brighton has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Construction - Raw Materials industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Adelaide Brighton needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Construction - Raw Materials 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Adelaide Brighton Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Adelaide Brighton 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 Adelaide Brighton 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 Adelaide Brighton 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 Adelaide Brighton 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 Adelaide Brighton needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
