Angus Energy (ANGSA) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Oil & Gas - Integrated
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Angus Energy (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Angus Energy is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing, technology disruption,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Angus Energy can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Angus Energy, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Angus Energy
2. Improving business portfolio management of Angus Energy
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Oil & Gas - Integrated sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Angus Energy
Strengths of Angus Energy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Angus Energy are -
High brand equity
– Angus Energy has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Angus Energy to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Angus Energy 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Angus Energy is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– Angus Energy is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Angus Energy has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Angus Energy does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Angus Energy has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Angus Energy 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Angus Energy is present in almost all the verticals within the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. This has provided Angus Energy 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Angus Energy has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Angus Energy have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Angus Energy emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– Angus Energy has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Angus Energy to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Angus Energy to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Angus Energy in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Angus Energy has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Angus Energy to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Angus Energy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Angus Energy are -
Skills based hiring in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Angus Energy 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Angus Energy, 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Angus Energy strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Angus Energy 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Angus Energy needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Angus Energy has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry over the last five years. Angus Energy 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Angus Energy 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 Oil & Gas - Integrated industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Angus Energy is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Angus Energy 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Angus Energy 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Angus Energy is just above the Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry, Angus Energy 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.
Angus Energy Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Angus Energy are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Angus Energy 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Angus Energy 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.
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 Angus Energy 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Angus Energy can develop new processes and procedures in Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Angus Energy has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. This can help Angus Energy to build a more holistic ecosystem for Angus Energy products in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Angus Energy can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Angus Energy 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Angus Energy 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Angus Energy can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Angus Energy 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
– Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Angus Energy to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Angus Energy 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.
Threats Angus Energy External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Angus Energy are -
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.
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 Angus Energy business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Angus Energy has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Angus Energy needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
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 Angus Energy in the Oil & Gas - Integrated sector and impact the bottomline 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. Angus Energy needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Angus Energy 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Angus Energy is facing in Oil & Gas - Integrated 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 Angus Energy.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Angus Energy 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. Angus Energy can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry.
Increasing wage structure of Angus Energy
– 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 Angus Energy.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Angus Energy may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Oil & Gas - Integrated sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Angus Energy 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 Oil & Gas - Integrated industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Angus Energy Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy 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 Angus Energy needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.