SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Horizonte Minerals (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Horizonte Minerals is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing transportation and logistics costs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Horizonte Minerals
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Horizonte Minerals can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Horizonte Minerals, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Horizonte 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 Horizonte Minerals can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Horizonte Minerals
2. Improving business portfolio management of Horizonte Minerals
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 Horizonte Minerals
Strengths of Horizonte Minerals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Horizonte Minerals are -
Innovation driven organization
– Horizonte Minerals is one of the most innovative firm in Gold & Silver sector.
Learning organization
- Horizonte 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 Horizonte Minerals is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Horizonte Minerals emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Horizonte Minerals 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 Horizonte Minerals have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Horizonte Minerals
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Horizonte Minerals 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
– Horizonte Minerals has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Horizonte Minerals 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Horizonte Minerals in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Horizonte Minerals has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Horizonte Minerals to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Horizonte Minerals 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Horizonte Minerals has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Horizonte Minerals staying ahead in the Gold & Silver industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Horizonte 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.
High brand equity
– Horizonte Minerals has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Horizonte Minerals to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Gold & Silver industry
– Horizonte Minerals has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Horizonte Minerals to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Gold & Silver industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Horizonte Minerals to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Gold & Silver industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Horizonte Minerals digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Horizonte 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.
Weaknesses of Horizonte Minerals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Horizonte Minerals are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Horizonte Minerals 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.
Skills based hiring in Gold & Silver industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Horizonte 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Horizonte Minerals 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Horizonte Minerals is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Horizonte Minerals to provide better information regarding Gold & Silver products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Horizonte Minerals has some of the most successful models in the Gold & Silver industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Horizonte Minerals should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Horizonte Minerals 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. Horizonte Minerals 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 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 Horizonte Minerals supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Horizonte Minerals is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Horizonte Minerals vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Horizonte Minerals is one of the leading players in the Gold & Silver industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Gold & Silver industry in last five years.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Horizonte Minerals, 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Horizonte 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Horizonte Minerals is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Gold & Silver industry, but Horizonte Minerals needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Horizonte Minerals to focus more on services in the Gold & Silver industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Horizonte Minerals Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Horizonte Minerals are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Horizonte Minerals 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 Horizonte Minerals to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Horizonte Minerals to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Gold & Silver industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Horizonte Minerals can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Horizonte Minerals has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Gold & Silver industry. This can help Horizonte Minerals to build a more holistic ecosystem for Horizonte Minerals products in the Gold & Silver industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Horizonte Minerals 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Horizonte 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 Horizonte Minerals to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Horizonte Minerals 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 Gold & Silver industry.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Horizonte Minerals 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Horizonte 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 Gold & Silver industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Horizonte Minerals can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Horizonte Minerals operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Gold & Silver sector.
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. Horizonte Minerals 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. Horizonte Minerals 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Horizonte Minerals 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Horizonte Minerals to increase its market reach. Horizonte Minerals will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
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. Horizonte Minerals can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Horizonte Minerals External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Horizonte Minerals are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Horizonte Minerals in Gold & Silver industry. The Gold & Silver 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.
Environmental challenges
– Horizonte Minerals 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. Horizonte Minerals can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Gold & Silver industry.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Horizonte 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 Gold & Silver 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 Horizonte Minerals.
Increasing wage structure of Horizonte 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 Horizonte Minerals.
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. Horizonte Minerals needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Gold & Silver industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Horizonte 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Horizonte 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 Horizonte Minerals prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Horizonte Minerals 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 Gold & Silver industry.
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 Horizonte Minerals business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Horizonte Minerals has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Gold & Silver industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Horizonte Minerals 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.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Horizonte Minerals Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Horizonte 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 Horizonte 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 Horizonte 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 Horizonte 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 Horizonte Minerals needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.