American Pacific Borate Lithium (ABR) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Metal Mining
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for American Pacific Borate Lithium (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , American Pacific Borate Lithium is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of American Pacific Borate Lithium
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that American Pacific Borate Lithium can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the American Pacific Borate Lithium, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of American Pacific Borate Lithium
2. Improving business portfolio management of American Pacific Borate Lithium
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of American Pacific Borate Lithium
Strengths of American Pacific Borate Lithium | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of American Pacific Borate Lithium are -
Diverse revenue streams
– American Pacific Borate Lithium is present in almost all the verticals within the Metal Mining industry. This has provided American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 recruit top talent
– American Pacific Borate Lithium is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Metal Mining industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 lead change in Metal Mining
– American Pacific Borate Lithium is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Metal Mining industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled American Pacific Borate Lithium in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Successful track record of launching new products
– American Pacific Borate Lithium has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
Learning organization
- American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at American Pacific Borate Lithium emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– American Pacific Borate Lithium has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – American Pacific Borate Lithium staying ahead in the Metal Mining industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of American Pacific Borate Lithium in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. American Pacific Borate Lithium has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps American Pacific Borate Lithium to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– American Pacific Borate Lithium has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled American Pacific Borate Lithium to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Metal Mining industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For American Pacific Borate Lithium digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
Weaknesses of American Pacific Borate Lithium | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of American Pacific Borate Lithium are -
High dependence on American Pacific Borate Lithium ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of American Pacific Borate Lithium still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Metal Mining industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though American Pacific Borate Lithium has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of American Pacific Borate Lithium is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Metal Mining industry, but American Pacific Borate Lithium needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help American Pacific Borate Lithium to focus more on services in the Metal Mining industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, American Pacific Borate Lithium has high operating costs in the Metal Mining industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract American Pacific Borate Lithium lucrative customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 Metal Mining industry using digital technology.
Need for greater diversity
– American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though American Pacific Borate Lithium has some of the most successful models in the Metal Mining industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. American Pacific Borate Lithium should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, American Pacific Borate Lithium has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Metal Mining industry over the last five years. American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 Metal Mining industry, American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, American Pacific Borate Lithium is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left American Pacific Borate Lithium vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that American Pacific Borate Lithium needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Metal Mining industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at American Pacific Borate Lithium can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as American Pacific Borate Lithium is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Metal Mining industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, American Pacific Borate Lithium is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Metal Mining industry.
American Pacific Borate Lithium Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of American Pacific Borate Lithium are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, American Pacific Borate Lithium can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that American Pacific Borate Lithium operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Metal Mining sector.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help American Pacific Borate Lithium to increase its market reach. American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, American Pacific Borate Lithium is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. American Pacific Borate Lithium can utilize new technology in the field of Metal Mining industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
Buying journey improvements
– American Pacific Borate Lithium can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Metal Mining industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects American Pacific Borate Lithium can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Metal Mining industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. American Pacific Borate Lithium can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at American Pacific Borate Lithium can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Metal Mining industry.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
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 American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for American Pacific Borate Lithium in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Metal Mining industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
Threats American Pacific Borate Lithium External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of American Pacific Borate Lithium are -
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 American Pacific Borate Lithium business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
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.
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. American Pacific Borate Lithium 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.
Regulatory challenges
– American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 Metal Mining industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, American Pacific Borate Lithium may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Metal Mining sector.
Increasing wage structure of American Pacific Borate Lithium
– 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium.
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 American Pacific Borate Lithium in the Metal Mining sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– American Pacific Borate Lithium can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the Metal Mining industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 Metal Mining industry and other sectors.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Metal Mining industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. American Pacific Borate Lithium can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. American Pacific Borate Lithium needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of American Pacific Borate Lithium Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium 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 American Pacific Borate Lithium needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.