Semapa (0IE9) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Paper & Paper Products
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Semapa (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Semapa is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing transportation and logistics costs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
increasing energy prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Semapa can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Semapa, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Semapa 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 Semapa can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Semapa
2. Improving business portfolio management of Semapa
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Paper & Paper Products sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Semapa
Strengths of Semapa | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Semapa are -
Strong track record of project management in the Paper & Paper Products industry
– Semapa is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Semapa 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 Semapa is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Semapa emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Semapa is one of the leading players in the Paper & Paper Products industry in United Kingdom. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United Kingdom. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Semapa
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Semapa does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Semapa in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Semapa has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Semapa to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Semapa comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Paper & Paper Products 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.
Ability to lead change in Paper & Paper Products
– Semapa is one of the leading players in the Paper & Paper Products industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Paper & Paper Products industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Semapa in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Semapa is present in almost all the verticals within the Paper & Paper Products industry. This has provided Semapa 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.
Digital Transformation in Paper & Paper Products industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Semapa digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Semapa 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Semapa is one of the most innovative firm in Paper & Paper Products sector.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Semapa 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Semapa has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Semapa staying ahead in the Paper & Paper Products industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Semapa | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Semapa are -
Need for greater diversity
– Semapa has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Semapa has some of the most successful models in the Paper & Paper Products industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Semapa should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Semapa needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Paper & Paper Products industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Semapa can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Semapa is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Semapa has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Paper & Paper Products industry over the last five years. Semapa 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Paper & Paper Products industry, Semapa 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Semapa strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Semapa don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Paper & Paper Products industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Semapa 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 Paper & Paper Products industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Semapa 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 Paper & Paper Products industry using digital technology.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Semapa needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Semapa, in the dynamic environment of Paper & Paper Products industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Semapa has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Semapa is one of the leading players in the Paper & Paper Products industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Paper & Paper Products industry in last five years.
Semapa Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Semapa are -
Buying journey improvements
– Semapa can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Paper & Paper Products 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Semapa can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Paper & Paper Products 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Semapa 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.
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. Semapa can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Semapa in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Paper & Paper Products industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Semapa is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Semapa can utilize new technology in the field of Paper & Paper Products industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
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 Semapa 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Semapa has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Paper & Paper Products sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Semapa to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Semapa 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 Semapa 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 Paper & Paper Products industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Semapa 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. Semapa 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Semapa 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Semapa 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Semapa has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Paper & Paper Products industry. This can help Semapa to build a more holistic ecosystem for Semapa products in the Paper & Paper Products industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Semapa External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Semapa are -
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. Semapa needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Paper & Paper Products 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. Semapa 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 Semapa is facing in Paper & Paper Products sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Semapa.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Semapa 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 Paper & Paper Products industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Semapa in Paper & Paper Products industry. The Paper & Paper Products 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
– Semapa 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 Paper & Paper Products industry regulations.
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 Semapa business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Paper & Paper Products industry are lowering. It can presents Semapa with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Paper & Paper Products sector.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Semapa 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 Paper & Paper Products industry and other sectors.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Semapa has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Paper & Paper Products industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Semapa needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Paper & Paper Products 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.
Increasing wage structure of Semapa
– 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 Semapa.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Semapa Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Semapa 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 Semapa 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 Semapa 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 Semapa 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 Semapa needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.