Enhanced Oil & Gas (EOR) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Oil & Gas - Integrated
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Enhanced Oil & Gas (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Enhanced Oil & Gas 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%, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing transportation and logistics costs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Enhanced Oil & Gas
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Enhanced Oil & Gas can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Enhanced Oil & Gas, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Enhanced Oil & Gas can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Enhanced Oil & Gas
2. Improving business portfolio management of Enhanced Oil & Gas
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Oil & Gas - Integrated sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Enhanced Oil & Gas
Strengths of Enhanced Oil & Gas | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Enhanced Oil & Gas are -
Training and development
– Enhanced Oil & Gas has one of the best training and development program in Energy 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Enhanced Oil & Gas is one of the most innovative firm in Oil & Gas - Integrated sector.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Enhanced Oil & Gas in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Enhanced Oil & Gas has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Enhanced Oil & Gas to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Enhanced Oil & Gas in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Enhanced Oil & Gas has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Enhanced Oil & Gas staying ahead in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Enhanced Oil & Gas
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Enhanced Oil & Gas does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– Enhanced Oil & Gas has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Enhanced Oil & Gas to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Enhanced Oil & Gas to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Enhanced Oil & Gas is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Enhanced Oil & Gas emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Enhanced Oil & Gas 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.
High brand equity
– Enhanced Oil & Gas has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Enhanced Oil & Gas to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Oil & Gas - Integrated
– Enhanced Oil & Gas is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Enhanced Oil & Gas in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Enhanced Oil & Gas comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Weaknesses of Enhanced Oil & Gas | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Enhanced Oil & Gas are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Enhanced Oil & Gas, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Enhanced Oil & Gas, in the dynamic environment of Oil & Gas - Integrated industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Enhanced Oil & Gas has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Enhanced Oil & Gas needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Enhanced Oil & Gas can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Enhanced Oil & Gas is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Enhanced Oil & Gas needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Enhanced Oil & Gas has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Enhanced Oil & Gas has some of the most successful models in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Enhanced Oil & Gas should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry, Enhanced Oil & Gas 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Enhanced Oil & Gas products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Enhanced Oil & Gas needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Employees’ less understanding of Enhanced Oil & Gas strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Enhanced Oil & Gas 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Oil & Gas - Integrated industry using digital technology.
Skills based hiring in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Enhanced Oil & Gas 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.
Enhanced Oil & Gas Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Enhanced Oil & Gas are -
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 Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Enhanced Oil & Gas in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. Now Enhanced Oil & Gas can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Enhanced Oil & Gas is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Enhanced Oil & Gas can utilize new technology in the field of Oil & Gas - Integrated industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Enhanced Oil & Gas 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Enhanced Oil & Gas has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. This can help Enhanced Oil & Gas to build a more holistic ecosystem for Enhanced Oil & Gas products in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Enhanced Oil & Gas can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Enhanced Oil & Gas 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Oil & Gas - Integrated industry.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Enhanced Oil & Gas can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Enhanced Oil & Gas has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Oil & Gas - Integrated sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Enhanced Oil & Gas to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Enhanced Oil & Gas to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Enhanced Oil & Gas in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Enhanced Oil & Gas 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Enhanced Oil & Gas 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. Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Enhanced Oil & Gas External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Enhanced Oil & Gas are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Oil & Gas - Integrated industry.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Oil & Gas - Integrated industry and other sectors.
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 Enhanced Oil & Gas business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Enhanced Oil & Gas can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Enhanced Oil & Gas 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.
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. Enhanced Oil & Gas needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Enhanced Oil & Gas 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Enhanced Oil & Gas is facing in Oil & Gas - Integrated sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Oil & Gas - Integrated industry are lowering. It can presents Enhanced Oil & Gas with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Oil & Gas - Integrated sector.
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 Enhanced Oil & Gas in the Oil & Gas - Integrated sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Enhanced Oil & Gas
– 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 Enhanced Oil & Gas.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Enhanced Oil & Gas in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. The Oil & Gas - Integrated 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 Enhanced Oil & Gas Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Enhanced Oil & Gas 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 Enhanced Oil & Gas needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.