SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Touchstone Exploration (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Touchstone Exploration is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, increasing energy prices, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Touchstone Exploration
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Touchstone Exploration can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Touchstone Exploration, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Touchstone Exploration 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 Touchstone Exploration can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Touchstone Exploration
2. Improving business portfolio management of Touchstone Exploration
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Oil & Gas Operations sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Touchstone Exploration
Strengths of Touchstone Exploration | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Touchstone Exploration are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Touchstone Exploration is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Analytics focus
– Touchstone Exploration 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 Oil & Gas Operations 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 lead change in Oil & Gas Operations
– Touchstone Exploration is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Touchstone Exploration in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Touchstone Exploration in Oil & Gas Operations industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Touchstone Exploration in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Touchstone Exploration has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Touchstone Exploration to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Oil & Gas Operations industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Touchstone Exploration digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Touchstone Exploration 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Touchstone Exploration is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Touchstone Exploration has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Touchstone Exploration to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Touchstone Exploration to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Touchstone Exploration 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 Operations industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Touchstone Exploration have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Touchstone Exploration 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 Touchstone Exploration is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Touchstone Exploration emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Touchstone Exploration has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Touchstone Exploration to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Touchstone Exploration is present in almost all the verticals within the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This has provided Touchstone Exploration 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.
Weaknesses of Touchstone Exploration | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Touchstone Exploration are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Touchstone Exploration needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Touchstone Exploration 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry using digital technology.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Touchstone Exploration is just above the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Touchstone Exploration, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Touchstone Exploration 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Touchstone Exploration 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 Operations industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Touchstone Exploration needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Oil & Gas Operations industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Touchstone Exploration can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Touchstone Exploration is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Touchstone Exploration is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas Operations industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in last five years.
Employees’ less understanding of Touchstone Exploration strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Touchstone Exploration 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Touchstone Exploration has high operating costs in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Touchstone Exploration lucrative customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Touchstone Exploration has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Touchstone Exploration Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Touchstone Exploration are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Touchstone Exploration is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Touchstone Exploration can utilize new technology in the field of Oil & Gas Operations industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Touchstone Exploration 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Touchstone Exploration has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Oil & Gas Operations sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Touchstone Exploration to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Touchstone Exploration to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Touchstone Exploration can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Touchstone Exploration 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Oil & Gas Operations industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Touchstone Exploration can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Touchstone Exploration 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 Touchstone Exploration to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Touchstone Exploration has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Oil & Gas Operations industry. This can help Touchstone Exploration to build a more holistic ecosystem for Touchstone Exploration products in the Oil & Gas Operations industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Touchstone Exploration can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Touchstone Exploration 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 Operations industry.
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 Touchstone Exploration 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Touchstone Exploration in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. Now Touchstone Exploration can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Touchstone Exploration can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Touchstone Exploration External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Touchstone Exploration are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Touchstone Exploration 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 Oil & Gas Operations 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 Touchstone Exploration business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Touchstone Exploration 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 Operations industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– Touchstone Exploration 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. Touchstone Exploration can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Oil & Gas Operations industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Touchstone Exploration can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Touchstone Exploration 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, Touchstone Exploration 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 Touchstone Exploration prominent markets.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Oil & Gas Operations industry are lowering. It can presents Touchstone Exploration with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Oil & Gas Operations 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 Touchstone Exploration.
Increasing wage structure of Touchstone Exploration
– 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 Touchstone Exploration.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Touchstone Exploration has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Touchstone Exploration needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Touchstone Exploration in Oil & Gas Operations industry. The Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Touchstone Exploration Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Touchstone Exploration 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 Touchstone Exploration 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 Touchstone Exploration 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 Touchstone Exploration 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 Touchstone Exploration needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.