Borders&Southern (BSTH) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Oil & Gas Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Borders&Southern (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Borders&Southern is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
technology disruption, 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 Borders&Southern can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Borders&Southern, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Borders&Southern
2. Improving business portfolio management of Borders&Southern
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 Borders&Southern
Strengths of Borders&Southern | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Borders&Southern are -
Innovation driven organization
– Borders&Southern is one of the most innovative firm in Oil & Gas Operations sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Borders&Southern 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.
Training and development
– Borders&Southern has one of the best training and development program in Energy industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Borders&Southern in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Borders&Southern has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Borders&Southern to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Borders&Southern emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Borders&Southern has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Borders&Southern to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Borders&Southern to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Borders&Southern 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Borders&Southern 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Borders&Southern 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Borders&Southern has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Borders&Southern 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
– Borders&Southern is present in almost all the verticals within the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This has provided Borders&Southern 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Borders&Southern comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Weaknesses of Borders&Southern | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Borders&Southern are -
Skills based hiring in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Borders&Southern 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern lucrative customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Borders&Southern 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Borders&Southern 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Borders&Southern needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Borders&Southern has some of the most successful models in the Oil & Gas Operations industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Borders&Southern should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Borders&Southern 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Borders&Southern is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Borders&Southern to provide better information regarding Oil & Gas Operations products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High dependence on Borders&Southern ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Borders&Southern still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Oil & Gas Operations industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Borders&Southern has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Borders&Southern is planning to shift buying processes online.
Borders&Southern Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Borders&Southern are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Borders&Southern 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Borders&Southern has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Oil & Gas Operations industry. This can help Borders&Southern to build a more holistic ecosystem for Borders&Southern products in the Oil & Gas Operations industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Borders&Southern 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Borders&Southern 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.
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 Borders&Southern in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. Now Borders&Southern can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Borders&Southern 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 Operations industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Manufacturing automation
– Borders&Southern 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Oil & Gas Operations industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Borders&Southern 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. Borders&Southern 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Borders&Southern 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.
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 Borders&Southern 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Borders&Southern can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Borders&Southern operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Oil & Gas Operations sector.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Borders&Southern to increase its market reach. Borders&Southern 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. Borders&Southern can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Borders&Southern External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Borders&Southern are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Borders&Southern 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 Operations industry.
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 Borders&Southern business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Borders&Southern 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.
Environmental challenges
– Borders&Southern 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. Borders&Southern can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Borders&Southern will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Borders&Southern 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– Borders&Southern 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.
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 Borders&Southern.
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. Borders&Southern needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Borders&Southern in the Oil & Gas Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Borders&Southern
– 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 Borders&Southern.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Borders&Southern Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern 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 Borders&Southern needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.