SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Bushveld Minerals (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Bushveld Minerals is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Bushveld Minerals
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Bushveld Minerals can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Bushveld Minerals, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Bushveld Minerals
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bushveld Minerals
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Bushveld Minerals
Strengths of Bushveld Minerals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Bushveld Minerals are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Bushveld Minerals 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.
Digital Transformation in Metal Mining industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Bushveld Minerals digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Bushveld Minerals 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 lead change in Metal Mining
– Bushveld Minerals is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Metal Mining industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Bushveld Minerals in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Bushveld Minerals
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Bushveld Minerals does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Bushveld Minerals in Metal Mining industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Bushveld Minerals is one of the most innovative firm in Metal Mining sector.
High brand equity
– Bushveld Minerals has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Bushveld Minerals to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Bushveld Minerals is present in almost all the verticals within the Metal Mining industry. This has provided Bushveld Minerals 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Bushveld Minerals 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
- Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Bushveld Minerals emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Bushveld Minerals has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Metal Mining industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Bushveld Minerals have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Bushveld Minerals 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.
Weaknesses of Bushveld Minerals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Bushveld Minerals are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Bushveld Minerals is just above the Metal Mining 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Bushveld Minerals 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Bushveld Minerals products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Bushveld Minerals needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Bushveld Minerals 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Bushveld Minerals is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Bushveld Minerals 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. Bushveld Minerals should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Bushveld Minerals is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Bushveld Minerals to provide better information regarding Metal Mining products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
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 Bushveld Minerals supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Bushveld Minerals is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Bushveld Minerals vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Bushveld Minerals, 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.
Skills based hiring in Metal Mining industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Bushveld Minerals 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.
Bushveld Minerals Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Bushveld Minerals are -
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Bushveld Minerals has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Metal Mining industry. This can help Bushveld Minerals to build a more holistic ecosystem for Bushveld Minerals products in the Metal Mining industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Bushveld Minerals can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Metal Mining 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Bushveld Minerals can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Bushveld Minerals 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.
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 Bushveld Minerals in the Metal Mining industry. Now Bushveld Minerals can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Bushveld Minerals 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Bushveld Minerals can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Bushveld Minerals operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Metal Mining sector.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Bushveld Minerals to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Bushveld Minerals is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Bushveld Minerals 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Bushveld Minerals 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. Bushveld Minerals can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Buying journey improvements
– Bushveld Minerals can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Metal Mining 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.
Threats Bushveld Minerals External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Bushveld Minerals 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. Bushveld Minerals needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Bushveld Minerals 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Bushveld Minerals is facing in Metal Mining sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Bushveld Minerals
– 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 Bushveld Minerals.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Bushveld Minerals has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Metal Mining industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Bushveld Minerals needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Metal Mining 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Bushveld Minerals 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Metal Mining industry are lowering. It can presents Bushveld Minerals with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Metal Mining 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 Bushveld Minerals business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Bushveld Minerals 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.
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 Bushveld Minerals.
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 Bushveld Minerals 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bushveld Minerals Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals 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 Bushveld Minerals needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.