Silver City Minerals Ltd (SCI) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Gold & Silver
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Silver City Minerals Ltd (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Silver City Minerals Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
increasing energy prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Silver City Minerals Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Silver City Minerals Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Silver City Minerals Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Silver City 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Silver City Minerals Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Silver City 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd
Strengths of Silver City Minerals Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Silver City Minerals Ltd are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Silver City 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.
High brand equity
– Silver City Minerals Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Silver City Minerals Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Silver City Minerals Ltd 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management in the Gold & Silver industry
– Silver City 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Gold & Silver industry
– Silver City Minerals Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Silver City Minerals Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Gold & Silver industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Silver City Minerals Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Silver City Minerals Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Silver City 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Silver City Minerals Ltd has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Silver City Minerals Ltd is present in almost all the verticals within the Gold & Silver industry. This has provided Silver City Minerals Ltd 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Silver City Minerals Ltd is one of the most innovative firm in Gold & Silver sector.
Learning organization
- Silver City Minerals Ltd 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Silver City Minerals Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Gold & Silver industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Silver City Minerals Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Silver City 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Silver City 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.
Weaknesses of Silver City Minerals Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Silver City Minerals Ltd are -
Employees’ less understanding of Silver City Minerals Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Silver City 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Silver City Minerals Ltd, 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Silver City Minerals Ltd products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Silver City Minerals Ltd needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
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 Silver City Minerals Ltd supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Silver City Minerals Ltd is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Silver City Minerals Ltd vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Silver City 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. Silver City Minerals Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Silver City 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd lucrative customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Gold & Silver industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Silver City Minerals Ltd 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Silver City Minerals Ltd 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Silver City 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.
Skills based hiring in Gold & Silver industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Silver City 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Gold & Silver industry, Silver City Minerals Ltd 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.
Silver City Minerals Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Silver City Minerals Ltd are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Silver City 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.
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. Silver City Minerals Ltd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Silver City 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Silver City Minerals Ltd 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
– Silver City 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Silver City 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 Silver City 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Gold & Silver industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Silver City Minerals Ltd in the Gold & Silver industry. Now Silver City Minerals Ltd can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Silver City 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Silver City Minerals Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 Silver City Minerals Ltd 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Silver City Minerals Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Silver City Minerals Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Gold & Silver sector.
Manufacturing automation
– Silver City Minerals Ltd 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Silver City Minerals Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Gold & Silver industry. This can help Silver City Minerals Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Silver City Minerals Ltd products in the Gold & Silver industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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. Silver City 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. Silver City 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.
Threats Silver City Minerals Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Silver City Minerals Ltd are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Silver City 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd prominent markets.
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. Silver City 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.
Increasing wage structure of Silver City Minerals Ltd
– 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Silver City 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, Silver City 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Gold & Silver industry are lowering. It can presents Silver City 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Silver City Minerals Ltd in the Gold & Silver sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Silver City 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. Silver City Minerals Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Gold & Silver industry.
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. Silver City Minerals Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Gold & Silver industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Silver City 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Silver City 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Silver City 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Silver City Minerals Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Silver City 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 Silver City 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 Silver City 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 Silver City 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 Silver City Minerals Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.