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St Barbara (SBM) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for St Barbara (Australia)


Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , St Barbara is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing energy prices, etc



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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of St Barbara


SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that St Barbara can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the St Barbara, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which St Barbara 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 St Barbara can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of St Barbara
2. Improving business portfolio management of St Barbara
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Gold & Silver sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of St Barbara




Strengths of St Barbara | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of St Barbara are -

Strong track record of project management in the Gold & Silver industry

– St Barbara is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Gold & Silver industry

– St Barbara has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled St Barbara to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Gold & Silver industry. The sustainable margins have also helped St Barbara to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Diverse revenue streams

– St Barbara is present in almost all the verticals within the Gold & Silver industry. This has provided St Barbara 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

– St Barbara is one of the leading players in the Gold & Silver 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.

Highly skilled collaborators

– St Barbara has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Gold & Silver industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of St Barbara have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Organizational Resilience of St Barbara

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing St Barbara does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of St Barbara in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. St Barbara has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps St Barbara to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Training and development

– St Barbara 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.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of St Barbara in Gold & Silver industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Analytics focus

– St Barbara is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Gold & Silver industry. The technology infrastructure of Australia is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.

Learning organization

- St Barbara 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 St Barbara is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at St Barbara emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of St Barbara comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Gold & Silver 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 St Barbara | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of St Barbara are -

High dependence on St Barbara ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of St Barbara still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Gold & Silver industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though St Barbara has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As St Barbara is one of the leading players in the Gold & Silver industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Gold & Silver industry in last five years.

Need for greater diversity

– St Barbara 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.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of St Barbara is just above the Gold & Silver 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.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Gold & Silver industry, St Barbara 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 St Barbara, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Gold & Silver 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.

High bargaining power of channel partners in Gold & Silver industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, St Barbara 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 Gold & Silver industry.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that St Barbara needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Gold & Silver industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at St Barbara can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as St Barbara is planning to shift buying processes online.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, St Barbara 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 Gold & Silver industry using digital technology.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, St Barbara 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.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

St Barbara has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Gold & Silver industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.




St Barbara Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The opportunities of St Barbara are -

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of St Barbara has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Gold & Silver industry. This can help St Barbara to build a more holistic ecosystem for St Barbara products in the Gold & Silver industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for St Barbara 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.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, St Barbara can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.

Manufacturing automation

– St Barbara can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Gold & Silver 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.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help St Barbara to increase its market reach. St Barbara 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– St Barbara can develop new processes and procedures in Gold & Silver industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.

Buying journey improvements

– St Barbara can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Gold & Silver 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.

Loyalty marketing

– St Barbara 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects St Barbara can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at St Barbara 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 Gold & Silver industry.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, St Barbara 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 St Barbara to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for St Barbara 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 St Barbara to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Gold & Silver industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. St Barbara can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.




Threats St Barbara External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The threats of St Barbara are -

Environmental challenges

– St Barbara 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. St Barbara can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Gold & Silver industry.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for St Barbara in Gold & Silver industry. The Gold & Silver 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.

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.

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. St Barbara 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

– St Barbara 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 Gold & Silver industry regulations.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– St Barbara has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Gold & Silver industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, St Barbara needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Gold & Silver 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.

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 St Barbara business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Gold & Silver industry are lowering. It can presents St Barbara with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Gold & Silver sector.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Gold & Silver industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. St Barbara can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

Increasing wage structure of St Barbara

– 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 St Barbara.

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. St Barbara needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Gold & Silver industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, St Barbara may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Gold & Silver sector.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, St Barbara 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 St Barbara prominent markets.




Weighted SWOT Analysis of St Barbara Template, Example


Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at St Barbara 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 St Barbara 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 St Barbara 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 St Barbara 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 St Barbara needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.



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