Salt Lake Potash (SO4) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Coal
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Salt Lake Potash (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Salt Lake Potash is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, technology disruption, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Salt Lake Potash can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Salt Lake Potash, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Salt Lake Potash 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 Salt Lake Potash can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Salt Lake Potash
2. Improving business portfolio management of Salt Lake Potash
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Coal sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Salt Lake Potash
Strengths of Salt Lake Potash | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Salt Lake Potash are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Salt Lake Potash has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Coal industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Salt Lake Potash have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Salt Lake Potash is one of the leading players in the Coal 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.
Learning organization
- Salt Lake Potash 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 Salt Lake Potash is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Salt Lake Potash emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Salt Lake Potash has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Salt Lake Potash to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Coal industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Salt Lake Potash digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Salt Lake Potash 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Salt Lake Potash has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Salt Lake Potash staying ahead in the Coal industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Salt Lake Potash has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Salt Lake Potash has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Innovation driven organization
– Salt Lake Potash is one of the most innovative firm in Coal sector.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Salt Lake Potash comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Coal 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
– Salt Lake Potash 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 Coal industry. The technology infrastructure of United Kingdom 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.
Organizational Resilience of Salt Lake Potash
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Salt Lake Potash does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management in the Coal industry
– Salt Lake Potash is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of Salt Lake Potash | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Salt Lake Potash are -
Employees’ less understanding of Salt Lake Potash strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Salt Lake Potash 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Coal industry, Salt Lake Potash 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Salt Lake Potash is just above the Coal 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Salt Lake Potash needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Salt Lake Potash is one of the leading players in the Coal industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Coal industry in last five years.
Lack of clear differentiation of Salt Lake Potash products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Salt Lake Potash 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 Salt Lake Potash supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Salt Lake Potash is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Salt Lake Potash vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Salt Lake Potash needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Coal industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Salt Lake Potash can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Salt Lake Potash is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Coal industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Salt Lake Potash 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 Coal industry.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Salt Lake Potash has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Coal industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Salt Lake Potash has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Coal industry over the last five years. Salt Lake Potash 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.
Salt Lake Potash Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Salt Lake Potash are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Coal industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Salt Lake Potash can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Buying journey improvements
– Salt Lake Potash can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Coal 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Salt Lake Potash is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Salt Lake Potash can utilize new technology in the field of Coal industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Coal industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Salt Lake Potash 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. Salt Lake Potash 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Salt Lake Potash has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Coal industry. This can help Salt Lake Potash to build a more holistic ecosystem for Salt Lake Potash products in the Coal industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Salt Lake Potash 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Salt Lake Potash can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Salt Lake Potash operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Coal sector.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Salt Lake Potash 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 Coal industry.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Salt Lake Potash can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Salt Lake Potash 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
– Salt Lake Potash has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Coal sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Salt Lake Potash to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Salt Lake Potash to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Salt Lake Potash 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. Salt Lake Potash can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Salt Lake Potash External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Salt Lake Potash are -
Environmental challenges
– Salt Lake Potash 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. Salt Lake Potash can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Coal industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Coal industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Salt Lake Potash can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Salt Lake Potash 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 Coal industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Coal industry are lowering. It can presents Salt Lake Potash with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Coal 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.
Increasing wage structure of Salt Lake Potash
– 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 Salt Lake Potash.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Salt Lake Potash 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 Salt Lake Potash prominent markets.
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 Salt Lake Potash.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Salt Lake Potash 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 Coal industry and other sectors.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Salt Lake Potash has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Coal industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Salt Lake Potash needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Coal 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Salt Lake Potash may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Coal 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 Salt Lake Potash in the Coal sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Salt Lake Potash is facing in Coal sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Salt Lake Potash Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Salt Lake Potash 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 Salt Lake Potash 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 Salt Lake Potash 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 Salt Lake Potash 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 Salt Lake Potash needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
