Lithium Consolidated Mineral (LI3) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Metal Mining
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Lithium Consolidated Mineral (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Lithium Consolidated Mineral is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Lithium Consolidated Mineral
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Lithium Consolidated Mineral can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lithium Consolidated Mineral, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Lithium Consolidated Mineral
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lithium Consolidated Mineral
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Lithium Consolidated Mineral
Strengths of Lithium Consolidated Mineral | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lithium Consolidated Mineral are -
Innovation driven organization
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral is one of the most innovative firm in Metal Mining sector.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Lithium Consolidated Mineral in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Lithium Consolidated Mineral has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Lithium Consolidated Mineral to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Lithium Consolidated Mineral in Metal Mining industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Lithium Consolidated Mineral
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Lithium Consolidated Mineral does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Lithium Consolidated Mineral to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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.
Learning organization
- Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Lithium Consolidated Mineral emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Lithium Consolidated Mineral comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Metal Mining 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.
Analytics focus
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Metal Mining 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.
Ability to lead change in Metal Mining
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Metal Mining industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Lithium Consolidated Mineral in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Lithium Consolidated Mineral | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Lithium Consolidated Mineral are -
Employees’ less understanding of Lithium Consolidated Mineral strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Lithium Consolidated Mineral is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Lithium Consolidated Mineral to provide better information regarding Metal Mining products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Metal Mining industry using digital technology.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Lithium Consolidated Mineral, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Metal Mining 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Lithium Consolidated Mineral needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Metal Mining industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Lithium Consolidated Mineral can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Lithium Consolidated Mineral is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Lithium Consolidated Mineral has some of the most successful models in the Metal Mining industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Lithium Consolidated Mineral should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Lithium Consolidated Mineral needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Lithium Consolidated Mineral has high operating costs in the Metal Mining industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Lithium Consolidated Mineral lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Lithium Consolidated Mineral products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Lithium Consolidated Mineral needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Lithium Consolidated Mineral has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Metal Mining industry over the last five years. Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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.
High dependence on Lithium Consolidated Mineral ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Lithium Consolidated Mineral still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Metal Mining industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Lithium Consolidated Mineral has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Lithium Consolidated Mineral Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Lithium Consolidated Mineral are -
Loyalty marketing
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Metal Mining industry. This can help Lithium Consolidated Mineral to build a more holistic ecosystem for Lithium Consolidated Mineral products in the Metal Mining industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Lithium Consolidated Mineral is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Lithium Consolidated Mineral can utilize new technology in the field of Metal Mining industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral can develop new processes and procedures in Metal Mining 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Metal Mining industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Lithium Consolidated Mineral can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Metal Mining sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Lithium Consolidated Mineral to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Lithium Consolidated Mineral to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Lithium Consolidated Mineral in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Metal Mining 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. Lithium Consolidated Mineral can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Lithium Consolidated Mineral can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Metal Mining industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Lithium Consolidated Mineral in the Metal Mining industry. Now Lithium Consolidated Mineral can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Lithium Consolidated Mineral are -
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. Lithium Consolidated Mineral needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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.
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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral in the Metal Mining sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Metal Mining industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Lithium Consolidated Mineral may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Metal Mining sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Metal Mining industry and other sectors.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Lithium Consolidated Mineral in Metal Mining industry. The Metal Mining 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Metal Mining industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Lithium Consolidated Mineral can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral
– 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lithium Consolidated Mineral is facing in Metal Mining sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Lithium Consolidated Mineral Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral 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 Lithium Consolidated Mineral needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.