SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Ballarpur Industries (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Ballarpur Industries is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Ballarpur Industries
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Ballarpur Industries can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ballarpur Industries, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ballarpur Industries 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 Ballarpur Industries can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Ballarpur Industries
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ballarpur Industries
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Paper & Paper Products sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ballarpur Industries
Strengths of Ballarpur Industries | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Ballarpur Industries are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Ballarpur Industries has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Paper & Paper Products industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Ballarpur Industries have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Paper & Paper Products industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Ballarpur Industries digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Ballarpur Industries 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Ballarpur Industries 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Ballarpur Industries is one of the most innovative firm in Paper & Paper Products sector.
Learning organization
- Ballarpur Industries 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 Ballarpur Industries is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Ballarpur Industries emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Ballarpur Industries 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Ballarpur Industries in Paper & Paper Products industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Paper & Paper Products
– Ballarpur Industries is one of the leading players in the Paper & Paper Products industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Paper & Paper Products industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Ballarpur Industries in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Ballarpur Industries in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Ballarpur Industries has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Ballarpur Industries to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Ballarpur Industries is present in almost all the verticals within the Paper & Paper Products industry. This has provided Ballarpur Industries 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.
Training and development
– Ballarpur Industries 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Ballarpur Industries comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Paper & Paper Products 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 Ballarpur Industries | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Ballarpur Industries are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Ballarpur Industries needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Paper & Paper Products industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Ballarpur Industries can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Ballarpur Industries is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Ballarpur Industries is one of the leading players in the Paper & Paper Products industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Paper & Paper Products industry in last five years.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Ballarpur Industries is just above the Paper & Paper Products 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.
Skills based hiring in Paper & Paper Products industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Ballarpur Industries 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Ballarpur Industries has high operating costs in the Paper & Paper Products industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Ballarpur Industries lucrative customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Ballarpur Industries 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 Paper & Paper Products industry using digital technology.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Paper & Paper Products industry, Ballarpur Industries 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Ballarpur Industries, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Paper & Paper Products 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, Ballarpur Industries has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Paper & Paper Products industry over the last five years. Ballarpur Industries 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Ballarpur Industries strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Ballarpur Industries 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Ballarpur Industries is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Paper & Paper Products industry, but Ballarpur Industries needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Ballarpur Industries to focus more on services in the Paper & Paper Products industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ballarpur Industries Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Ballarpur Industries are -
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. Ballarpur Industries can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Paper & Paper Products industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Ballarpur Industries in the Paper & Paper Products industry. Now Ballarpur Industries can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Ballarpur Industries to increase its market reach. Ballarpur Industries 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Ballarpur Industries has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Paper & Paper Products sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Ballarpur Industries to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Ballarpur Industries to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Ballarpur Industries 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, Ballarpur Industries is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Ballarpur Industries can utilize new technology in the field of Paper & Paper Products industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Paper & Paper Products industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Ballarpur Industries can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 Ballarpur Industries 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Ballarpur Industries 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 Ballarpur Industries to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Ballarpur Industries 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Ballarpur Industries can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Paper & Paper Products sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Ballarpur Industries can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Ballarpur Industries 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 Ballarpur Industries to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Ballarpur Industries External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Ballarpur Industries are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Ballarpur Industries 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 Paper & Paper Products industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Paper & Paper Products industry are lowering. It can presents Ballarpur Industries with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Paper & Paper Products sector.
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. Ballarpur Industries needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Paper & Paper Products industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Ballarpur Industries business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Ballarpur Industries has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Paper & Paper Products industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ballarpur Industries needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Paper & Paper Products 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 Ballarpur Industries 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 Paper & Paper Products industry and other sectors.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Ballarpur Industries 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 Ballarpur Industries prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of Ballarpur Industries
– 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 Ballarpur Industries.
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 Ballarpur Industries in the Paper & Paper Products sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Ballarpur Industries 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. Ballarpur Industries can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Paper & Paper Products industry.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Ballarpur Industries 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Ballarpur Industries may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Paper & Paper Products sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ballarpur Industries Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Ballarpur Industries 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 Ballarpur Industries 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 Ballarpur Industries 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 Ballarpur Industries 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 Ballarpur Industries needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.