Gas Malaysia (GASM) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Natural Gas Utilities
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Gas Malaysia (Malaysia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Gas Malaysia is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing,
geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Gas Malaysia can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gas Malaysia, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gas Malaysia 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 Gas Malaysia can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Gas Malaysia
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gas Malaysia
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Malaysia
4. Making a Natural Gas Utilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Gas Malaysia
Strengths of Gas Malaysia | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gas Malaysia are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Gas Malaysia comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Analytics focus
– Gas Malaysia 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry. The technology infrastructure of Malaysia 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Gas Malaysia is one of the most innovative firm in Natural Gas Utilities sector.
Training and development
– Gas Malaysia has one of the best training and development program in Utilities 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Gas Malaysia 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
– Gas Malaysia has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Gas Malaysia 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gas Malaysia has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Natural Gas Utilities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Gas Malaysia have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Gas Malaysia has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Gas Malaysia to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Gas Malaysia is one of the leading players in the Natural Gas Utilities industry in Malaysia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Malaysia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Gas Malaysia
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Gas Malaysia does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Gas Malaysia 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 Gas Malaysia is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Gas Malaysia emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Gas Malaysia has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Weaknesses of Gas Malaysia | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Gas Malaysia are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Gas Malaysia is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Gas Malaysia to provide better information regarding Natural Gas Utilities products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Gas Malaysia needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Natural Gas Utilities industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Gas Malaysia can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Gas Malaysia is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Gas Malaysia is just above the Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Gas Malaysia, in the dynamic environment of Natural Gas Utilities industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Gas Malaysia has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Malaysia, Gas Malaysia needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Gas Malaysia has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Natural Gas Utilities industry over the last five years. Gas Malaysia 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Gas Malaysia 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 Gas Malaysia is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, but Gas Malaysia needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Gas Malaysia to focus more on services in the Natural Gas Utilities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, Gas Malaysia 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Gas Malaysia has some of the most successful models in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Gas Malaysia should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ less understanding of Gas Malaysia strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Gas Malaysia 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.
Gas Malaysia Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Gas Malaysia are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Gas Malaysia has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Natural Gas Utilities sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Gas Malaysia to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Gas Malaysia 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Gas Malaysia 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 Gas Malaysia has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Natural Gas Utilities industry. This can help Gas Malaysia to build a more holistic ecosystem for Gas Malaysia products in the Natural Gas Utilities industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Gas Malaysia 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Gas Malaysia can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Natural Gas Utilities 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 Gas Malaysia 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Gas Malaysia 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Gas Malaysia 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gas Malaysia can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Natural Gas Utilities industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Gas Malaysia in the Natural Gas Utilities industry. Now Gas Malaysia can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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. Gas Malaysia can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Gas Malaysia 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, Gas Malaysia can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Gas Malaysia operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Natural Gas Utilities sector.
Threats Gas Malaysia External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Gas Malaysia are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Gas Malaysia is facing in Natural Gas Utilities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Gas Malaysia 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.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Gas Malaysia in Natural Gas Utilities industry. The Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Gas Malaysia has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Natural Gas Utilities industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Gas Malaysia needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Natural Gas Utilities 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.
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. Gas Malaysia needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Natural Gas Utilities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Gas Malaysia 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Gas Malaysia 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 Natural Gas Utilities 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Gas Malaysia 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.
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 Gas Malaysia business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Gas Malaysia 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 Gas Malaysia prominent markets.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Natural Gas Utilities industry are lowering. It can presents Gas Malaysia with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Natural Gas Utilities sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Gas Malaysia Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Gas Malaysia 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 Gas Malaysia 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 Gas Malaysia 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 Gas Malaysia 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 Gas Malaysia needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.