SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Pancontinental Oil&Gas (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Pancontinental Oil&Gas is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Pancontinental Oil&Gas
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Pancontinental Oil&Gas can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pancontinental Oil&Gas, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Pancontinental Oil&Gas
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pancontinental Oil&Gas
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Oil & Gas Operations sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Pancontinental Oil&Gas
Strengths of Pancontinental Oil&Gas | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pancontinental Oil&Gas are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Pancontinental Oil&Gas in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Pancontinental Oil&Gas has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Pancontinental Oil&Gas to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Oil & Gas Operations industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Pancontinental Oil&Gas digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Pancontinental Oil&Gas staying ahead in the Oil & Gas Operations 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Oil & Gas Operations 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Pancontinental Oil&Gas to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Pancontinental Oil&Gas to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas is one of the most innovative firm in Oil & Gas Operations sector.
High brand equity
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Pancontinental Oil&Gas to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas is present in almost all the verticals within the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This has provided Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Pancontinental Oil&Gas in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Pancontinental Oil&Gas emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Pancontinental Oil&Gas | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Pancontinental Oil&Gas are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Pancontinental Oil&Gas has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Oil & Gas Operations industry over the last five years. Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Pancontinental Oil&Gas, in the dynamic environment of Oil & Gas Operations industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Pancontinental Oil&Gas has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Pancontinental Oil&Gas needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Pancontinental Oil&Gas products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Pancontinental Oil&Gas needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry using digital technology.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Pancontinental Oil&Gas, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Skills based hiring in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Pancontinental Oil&Gas is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Oil & Gas Operations industry, but Pancontinental Oil&Gas needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Pancontinental Oil&Gas to focus more on services in the Oil & Gas Operations industry rather than just following the product 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Pancontinental Oil&Gas is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Pancontinental Oil&Gas vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Employees’ less understanding of Pancontinental Oil&Gas strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Pancontinental Oil&Gas Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Pancontinental Oil&Gas are -
Buying journey improvements
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Oil & Gas Operations industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Pancontinental Oil&Gas can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Pancontinental Oil&Gas to increase its market reach. Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
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. Pancontinental Oil&Gas can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Oil & Gas Operations industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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. Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Pancontinental Oil&Gas is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Pancontinental Oil&Gas can utilize new technology in the field of Oil & Gas Operations industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats Pancontinental Oil&Gas External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Pancontinental Oil&Gas are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Oil & Gas Operations industry are lowering. It can presents Pancontinental Oil&Gas with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Oil & Gas Operations sector.
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. Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Pancontinental Oil&Gas may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Oil & Gas Operations sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry and other sectors.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Pancontinental Oil&Gas is facing in Oil & Gas Operations sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Pancontinental Oil&Gas needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Oil & Gas Operations sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Pancontinental Oil&Gas.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Pancontinental Oil&Gas in Oil & Gas Operations industry. The Oil & Gas Operations industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Environmental challenges
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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. Pancontinental Oil&Gas can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Increasing wage structure of Pancontinental Oil&Gas
– 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas.
Regulatory challenges
– Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Pancontinental Oil&Gas Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas 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 Pancontinental Oil&Gas needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
