SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Botswana Diamonds (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Botswana Diamonds is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing energy prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Botswana Diamonds
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Botswana Diamonds can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Botswana Diamonds, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Botswana Diamonds 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 Botswana Diamonds can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Botswana Diamonds
2. Improving business portfolio management of Botswana Diamonds
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Non-Metallic Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Botswana Diamonds
Strengths of Botswana Diamonds | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Botswana Diamonds are -
High brand equity
– Botswana Diamonds has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Botswana Diamonds to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Botswana Diamonds 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 Botswana Diamonds is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Botswana Diamonds emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Botswana Diamonds 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Botswana Diamonds comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Non-Metallic Mining 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.
Digital Transformation in Non-Metallic Mining industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Botswana Diamonds digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Botswana Diamonds 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Botswana Diamonds has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Botswana Diamonds staying ahead in the Non-Metallic Mining industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Botswana Diamonds in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Botswana Diamonds has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Botswana Diamonds to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Botswana Diamonds is one of the leading players in the Non-Metallic Mining 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
– Botswana Diamonds has one of the best training and development program in Basic Materials 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.
Analytics focus
– Botswana Diamonds 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 Non-Metallic Mining 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Botswana Diamonds has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Non-Metallic Mining industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Botswana Diamonds have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Botswana Diamonds is one of the most innovative firm in Non-Metallic Mining sector.
Weaknesses of Botswana Diamonds | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Botswana Diamonds are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Non-Metallic Mining industry, Botswana Diamonds 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
Botswana Diamonds has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Non-Metallic Mining industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High dependence on Botswana Diamonds ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Botswana Diamonds still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Non-Metallic Mining industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Botswana Diamonds has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Botswana Diamonds, in the dynamic environment of Non-Metallic Mining industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Botswana Diamonds has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Botswana Diamonds has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Non-Metallic Mining industry over the last five years. Botswana Diamonds 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Botswana Diamonds, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Non-Metallic Mining 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Botswana Diamonds has high operating costs in the Non-Metallic Mining industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Botswana Diamonds lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Botswana Diamonds is one of the leading players in the Non-Metallic Mining industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Non-Metallic Mining industry in last five years.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Botswana Diamonds is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Non-Metallic Mining industry, but Botswana Diamonds needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Botswana Diamonds to focus more on services in the Non-Metallic Mining industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Botswana Diamonds needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Non-Metallic Mining industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Botswana Diamonds can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Botswana Diamonds is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Botswana Diamonds 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 Non-Metallic Mining industry using digital technology.
Botswana Diamonds Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Botswana Diamonds are -
Buying journey improvements
– Botswana Diamonds can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Non-Metallic Mining 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Botswana Diamonds has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Non-Metallic Mining sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Botswana Diamonds to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Botswana Diamonds to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Botswana Diamonds can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Botswana Diamonds operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Non-Metallic Mining sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Botswana Diamonds can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Botswana Diamonds to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Botswana Diamonds 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Non-Metallic Mining industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Botswana Diamonds 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. Botswana Diamonds 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Botswana Diamonds 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.
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 Botswana Diamonds 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.
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. Botswana Diamonds can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Botswana Diamonds in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Non-Metallic Mining industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Botswana Diamonds 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Botswana Diamonds is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Botswana Diamonds can utilize new technology in the field of Non-Metallic Mining industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Botswana Diamonds to increase its market reach. Botswana Diamonds 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.
Threats Botswana Diamonds External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Botswana Diamonds are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Non-Metallic Mining industry are lowering. It can presents Botswana Diamonds with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Non-Metallic Mining sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Botswana Diamonds 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 Botswana Diamonds prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Botswana Diamonds is facing in Non-Metallic Mining sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Botswana Diamonds 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 Non-Metallic Mining industry regulations.
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. Botswana Diamonds needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Non-Metallic Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Botswana Diamonds.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Non-Metallic Mining industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Botswana Diamonds can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Botswana Diamonds 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 Non-Metallic Mining industry and other sectors.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Botswana Diamonds 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Botswana Diamonds has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Non-Metallic Mining industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Botswana Diamonds needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Non-Metallic Mining 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Botswana Diamonds 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 Non-Metallic Mining industry.
Environmental challenges
– Botswana Diamonds 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. Botswana Diamonds can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Non-Metallic Mining industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Botswana Diamonds in Non-Metallic Mining industry. The Non-Metallic Mining 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 Botswana Diamonds Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Botswana Diamonds 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 Botswana Diamonds 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 Botswana Diamonds 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 Botswana Diamonds 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 Botswana Diamonds needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.