SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Surya Roshni (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Surya Roshni is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Surya Roshni can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Surya Roshni, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Surya Roshni
2. Improving business portfolio management of Surya Roshni
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 Surya Roshni
Strengths of Surya Roshni | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Surya Roshni are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Surya Roshni has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Surya Roshni staying ahead in the Iron & Steel 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 Surya Roshni 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.
Learning organization
- Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Surya Roshni emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Surya Roshni 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.
Digital Transformation in Iron & Steel industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Surya Roshni digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Surya Roshni 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Surya Roshni is present in almost all the verticals within the Iron & Steel industry. This has provided Surya Roshni 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.
Ability to lead change in Iron & Steel
– Surya Roshni is one of the leading players in the Iron & Steel industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Iron & Steel industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Surya Roshni in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Surya Roshni 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Surya Roshni in Iron & Steel industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Surya Roshni 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Surya Roshni has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Surya Roshni 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Surya Roshni in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Surya Roshni has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Surya Roshni to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Surya Roshni | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Surya Roshni are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Surya Roshni 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.
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 Surya Roshni supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Surya Roshni is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Surya Roshni vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Surya Roshni 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Surya Roshni, in the dynamic environment of Iron & Steel industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Surya Roshni has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Iron & Steel industry, Surya Roshni 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Surya Roshni has high operating costs in the Iron & Steel industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Surya Roshni lucrative customers.
High dependence on Surya Roshni ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Surya Roshni is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Surya Roshni is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Surya Roshni to provide better information regarding Iron & Steel products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Surya Roshni is just above the Iron & Steel 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of India, Surya Roshni needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Surya Roshni Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Surya Roshni are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Surya Roshni 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. Surya Roshni can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Surya Roshni has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Iron & Steel sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Surya Roshni to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Surya Roshni to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Iron & Steel industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Surya Roshni can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Buying journey improvements
– Surya Roshni 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Surya Roshni to increase its market reach. Surya Roshni 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.
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 Surya Roshni 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
– Surya Roshni 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
– Surya Roshni 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Surya Roshni can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Surya Roshni operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Iron & Steel sector.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Surya Roshni 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.
Threats Surya Roshni External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Surya Roshni are -
Environmental challenges
– Surya Roshni 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. Surya Roshni can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Iron & Steel industry.
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. Surya Roshni can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Surya Roshni is facing in Iron & Steel sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Surya Roshni 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Iron & Steel industry are lowering. It can presents Surya Roshni with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Iron & Steel sector.
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 Surya Roshni business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– Surya Roshni 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Surya Roshni has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Iron & Steel industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Surya Roshni 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Surya Roshni 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Surya Roshni 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Surya Roshni Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni 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 Surya Roshni needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
