SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Trans-Siberian Gold (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Trans-Siberian Gold is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is backlash against globalization, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Trans-Siberian Gold
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Trans-Siberian Gold can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Trans-Siberian Gold, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Trans-Siberian Gold
2. Improving business portfolio management of Trans-Siberian Gold
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Gold & Silver sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Trans-Siberian Gold
Strengths of Trans-Siberian Gold | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Trans-Siberian Gold are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Trans-Siberian Gold is present in almost all the verticals within the Gold & Silver industry. This has provided Trans-Siberian Gold 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.
Analytics focus
– Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Gold & Silver 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Trans-Siberian Gold is one of the leading players in the Gold & Silver 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Trans-Siberian Gold is one of the most innovative firm in Gold & Silver sector.
High brand equity
– Trans-Siberian Gold has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Trans-Siberian Gold to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Trans-Siberian Gold has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Gold & Silver industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Trans-Siberian Gold have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Trans-Siberian Gold in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Trans-Siberian Gold has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Trans-Siberian Gold to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management in the Gold & Silver industry
– Trans-Siberian Gold is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Trans-Siberian Gold comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Gold & Silver 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.
Organizational Resilience of Trans-Siberian Gold
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Gold & Silver industry
– Trans-Siberian Gold has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Trans-Siberian Gold to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Gold & Silver industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Trans-Siberian Gold to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Trans-Siberian Gold are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Trans-Siberian Gold has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Gold & Silver industry over the last five years. Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Gold & Silver industry, Trans-Siberian Gold 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Trans-Siberian Gold has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Gold & Silver industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Trans-Siberian Gold, in the dynamic environment of Gold & Silver industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Trans-Siberian Gold has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Trans-Siberian Gold 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Trans-Siberian Gold, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Gold & Silver 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Trans-Siberian Gold is just above the Gold & Silver 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.
High dependence on Trans-Siberian Gold ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Trans-Siberian Gold still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Gold & Silver industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Trans-Siberian Gold has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Trans-Siberian Gold needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Trans-Siberian Gold is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Trans-Siberian Gold to provide better information regarding Gold & Silver products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Trans-Siberian Gold has high operating costs in the Gold & Silver industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Trans-Siberian Gold lucrative customers.
Trans-Siberian Gold Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Trans-Siberian Gold are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Trans-Siberian Gold 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Trans-Siberian Gold 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Trans-Siberian Gold can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Trans-Siberian Gold operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Gold & Silver sector.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Trans-Siberian Gold has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Gold & Silver industry. This can help Trans-Siberian Gold to build a more holistic ecosystem for Trans-Siberian Gold products in the Gold & Silver industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Trans-Siberian Gold 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Trans-Siberian Gold has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Gold & Silver sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Trans-Siberian Gold to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Trans-Siberian Gold to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Trans-Siberian Gold can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Trans-Siberian Gold 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Trans-Siberian Gold in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Gold & Silver industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Developing new processes and practices
– Trans-Siberian Gold can develop new processes and procedures in Gold & Silver 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Gold & Silver industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Trans-Siberian Gold 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. Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Trans-Siberian Gold are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold prominent markets.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Gold & Silver industry are lowering. It can presents Trans-Siberian Gold with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Gold & Silver 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Trans-Siberian Gold has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Gold & Silver industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Trans-Siberian Gold needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Gold & Silver 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 Trans-Siberian Gold
– 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 Trans-Siberian Gold.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Trans-Siberian Gold 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.
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 Trans-Siberian Gold in the Gold & Silver 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. Trans-Siberian Gold needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Gold & Silver industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Gold & Silver industry and other sectors.
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 Trans-Siberian Gold business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Gold & Silver industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Trans-Siberian Gold may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Gold & Silver sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Trans-Siberian Gold Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold 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 Trans-Siberian Gold needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.