Kalina Power (KPO) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Electric Utilities
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Kalina Power (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Kalina Power is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing energy prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption, there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, geopolitical disruptions,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Kalina Power can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Kalina Power, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Kalina Power 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 Kalina Power can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Kalina Power
2. Improving business portfolio management of Kalina Power
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Electric Utilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Kalina Power
Strengths of Kalina Power | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Kalina Power are -
Learning organization
- Kalina Power 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 Kalina Power is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Kalina Power emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Kalina Power has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Kalina Power 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Kalina Power has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Electric Utilities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Kalina Power have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Kalina Power comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Electric Utilities 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 Kalina Power 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Kalina Power is present in almost all the verticals within the Electric Utilities industry. This has provided Kalina Power 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
– Kalina Power is one of the leading players in the Electric Utilities 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Kalina Power in Electric Utilities industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management in the Electric Utilities industry
– Kalina Power is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Kalina Power 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 Electric Utilities 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Kalina Power is one of the most innovative firm in Electric Utilities sector.
Training and development
– Kalina Power has one of the best training and development program in Utilities 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.
Weaknesses of Kalina Power | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Kalina Power are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Kalina Power is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Electric Utilities industry, but Kalina Power needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Kalina Power to focus more on services in the Electric Utilities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Kalina Power has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Electric Utilities industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Electric Utilities industry, Kalina Power 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Kalina Power has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Electric Utilities industry over the last five years. Kalina Power 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Kalina Power is just above the Electric Utilities industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Skills based hiring in Electric Utilities industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Kalina Power 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Kalina Power is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Kalina Power to provide better information regarding Electric Utilities products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Kalina Power needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ less understanding of Kalina Power strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Kalina Power 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Kalina Power has some of the most successful models in the Electric Utilities industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Kalina Power should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Kalina Power is one of the leading players in the Electric Utilities industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Electric Utilities industry in last five years.
Kalina Power Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Kalina Power are -
Loyalty marketing
– Kalina Power 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Kalina Power can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Electric Utilities 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Kalina Power has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Electric Utilities sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Kalina Power to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Kalina Power to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Kalina Power to increase its market reach. Kalina Power 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Kalina Power 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 Kalina Power to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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 Kalina Power 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Electric Utilities industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Kalina Power in the Electric Utilities industry. Now Kalina Power can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Kalina Power 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Kalina Power in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Electric Utilities industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Kalina Power 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 Kalina Power to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Kalina Power can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Kalina Power operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Electric Utilities sector.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Electric Utilities industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Kalina Power can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Kalina Power 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.
Threats Kalina Power External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Kalina Power are -
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 Kalina Power in the Electric Utilities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Kalina Power 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 Electric Utilities industry.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
High 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. Kalina Power needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Electric Utilities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Kalina Power in Electric Utilities industry. The Electric Utilities 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Kalina Power 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 Electric Utilities industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– Kalina Power 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. Kalina Power can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Electric Utilities industry.
Increasing wage structure of Kalina Power
– 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 Kalina Power.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Kalina Power may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Electric Utilities sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Kalina Power is facing in Electric Utilities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Kalina Power 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Kalina Power 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 Kalina Power prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Kalina Power Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Kalina Power 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 Kalina Power 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 Kalina Power 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 Kalina Power 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 Kalina Power needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.