SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Silkroad Nickel (Singapore)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Silkroad Nickel is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, wage bills are increasing, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Silkroad Nickel can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Silkroad Nickel, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Silkroad Nickel 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 Silkroad Nickel can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Silkroad Nickel
2. Improving business portfolio management of Silkroad Nickel
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Singapore
4. Making a Misc. Fabricated Products sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Silkroad Nickel
Strengths of Silkroad Nickel | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Silkroad Nickel are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Silkroad Nickel 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Silkroad Nickel in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Silkroad Nickel has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Silkroad Nickel to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Silkroad Nickel has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Misc. Fabricated Products industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Silkroad Nickel have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Diverse revenue streams
– Silkroad Nickel is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Fabricated Products industry. This has provided Silkroad Nickel 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.
Analytics focus
– Silkroad Nickel 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 Misc. Fabricated Products industry. The technology infrastructure of Singapore 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Silkroad Nickel in Misc. Fabricated Products industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Silkroad Nickel comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Misc. Fabricated Products 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.
Organizational Resilience of Silkroad Nickel
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Silkroad Nickel does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Misc. Fabricated Products
– Silkroad Nickel is one of the leading players in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry in Singapore. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry in Singapore but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Silkroad Nickel in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Silkroad Nickel 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 Silkroad Nickel is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Silkroad Nickel emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Silkroad Nickel has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Silkroad Nickel staying ahead in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Silkroad Nickel 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.
Weaknesses of Silkroad Nickel | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Silkroad Nickel are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Silkroad Nickel has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Silkroad Nickel, in the dynamic environment of Misc. Fabricated Products industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Silkroad Nickel has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Lack of clear differentiation of Silkroad Nickel products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Silkroad Nickel needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Silkroad Nickel needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Silkroad Nickel can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Silkroad Nickel is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Silkroad Nickel has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry over the last five years. Silkroad Nickel 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Silkroad Nickel is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry, but Silkroad Nickel needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Silkroad Nickel to focus more on services in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Silkroad Nickel is one of the leading players in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry in last five years.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Silkroad Nickel, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Misc. Fabricated Products 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Silkroad Nickel strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Silkroad Nickel 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 dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Silkroad Nickel supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Silkroad Nickel is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Silkroad Nickel vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Silkroad Nickel has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Silkroad Nickel should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Silkroad Nickel Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Silkroad Nickel are -
Loyalty marketing
– Silkroad Nickel 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Silkroad Nickel 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.
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. Silkroad Nickel can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Silkroad Nickel 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 Misc. Fabricated Products industry.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Silkroad Nickel has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Fabricated Products industry. This can help Silkroad Nickel to build a more holistic ecosystem for Silkroad Nickel products in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Silkroad Nickel is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Silkroad Nickel can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Fabricated Products 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 Silkroad Nickel to increase its market reach. Silkroad Nickel 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Silkroad Nickel 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Silkroad Nickel 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 Silkroad Nickel to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Misc. Fabricated Products industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Silkroad Nickel in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry. Now Silkroad Nickel can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Silkroad Nickel 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 Silkroad Nickel can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Silkroad Nickel can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Misc. Fabricated Products 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.
Threats Silkroad Nickel External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Silkroad Nickel are -
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 Silkroad Nickel.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Silkroad Nickel is facing in Misc. Fabricated Products 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. Silkroad Nickel 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Silkroad Nickel 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 Misc. Fabricated Products industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Silkroad Nickel
– 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 Silkroad Nickel.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Silkroad Nickel may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Fabricated Products sector.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Fabricated Products industry are lowering. It can presents Silkroad Nickel with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Misc. Fabricated Products sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Silkroad Nickel 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 Silkroad Nickel prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Silkroad Nickel 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 Misc. Fabricated Products industry and other sectors.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Fabricated Products industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Silkroad Nickel 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
– Silkroad Nickel 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
– Silkroad Nickel 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. Silkroad Nickel can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Fabricated Products industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Silkroad Nickel in Misc. Fabricated Products industry. The Misc. Fabricated Products 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 Silkroad Nickel Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Silkroad Nickel 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 Silkroad Nickel 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 Silkroad Nickel 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 Silkroad Nickel 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 Silkroad Nickel needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.