SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Cohiba Minerals Ltd (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Cohiba Minerals Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing energy prices, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Cohiba Minerals Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Cohiba Minerals Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cohiba Minerals Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Cohiba Minerals Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cohiba Minerals Ltd
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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd
Strengths of Cohiba Minerals Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cohiba Minerals Ltd are -
Strong track record of project management in the Gold & Silver industry
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Gold & Silver sector.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Organizational Resilience of Cohiba Minerals Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Cohiba Minerals Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Gold & Silver industry
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Cohiba Minerals Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Gold & Silver industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Cohiba Minerals Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Cohiba Minerals Ltd in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Cohiba Minerals Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Cohiba Minerals Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Gold & Silver industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Cohiba Minerals Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Training and development
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
High brand equity
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Cohiba Minerals Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Cohiba Minerals Ltd staying ahead in the Gold & Silver industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Cohiba Minerals Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Cohiba Minerals Ltd are -
Need for greater diversity
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Cohiba Minerals Ltd has high operating costs in the Gold & Silver industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Cohiba Minerals Ltd lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Cohiba Minerals Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Gold & Silver industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Cohiba Minerals Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Cohiba Minerals Ltd needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Cohiba Minerals Ltd has some of the most successful models in the Gold & Silver industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Cohiba Minerals Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on Cohiba Minerals Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Lack of clear differentiation of Cohiba Minerals Ltd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Cohiba Minerals Ltd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in Gold & Silver industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Cohiba Minerals Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Cohiba Minerals Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Cohiba Minerals Ltd are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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. Cohiba Minerals Ltd can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Gold & Silver industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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. Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Cohiba Minerals Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Gold & Silver industry. This can help Cohiba Minerals Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Cohiba Minerals Ltd products in the Gold & Silver industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Cohiba Minerals Ltd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Gold & Silver industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Gold & Silver sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Cohiba Minerals Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Cohiba Minerals Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Cohiba Minerals Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Cohiba Minerals Ltd can utilize new technology in the field of Gold & Silver industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Cohiba Minerals Ltd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Cohiba Minerals Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Cohiba Minerals Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Gold & Silver sector.
Threats Cohiba Minerals Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Cohiba Minerals Ltd are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd prominent markets.
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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd.
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. Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Gold & Silver industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cohiba Minerals Ltd is facing in Gold & Silver sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Gold & Silver industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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. Cohiba Minerals Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Gold & Silver industry.
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. Cohiba Minerals Ltd can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Gold & Silver industry are lowering. It can presents Cohiba Minerals Ltd with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Gold & Silver sector.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Cohiba Minerals Ltd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cohiba Minerals Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd 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 Cohiba Minerals Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.