Alupar Unt (ALUP11) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Alupar Unt (Brazil)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Alupar Unt is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, technology disruption, increasing commodity prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Alupar Unt

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Alupar Unt can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Alupar Unt, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Alupar Unt 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Alupar Unt can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Alupar Unt
2. Improving business portfolio management of Alupar Unt
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Brazil
4. Making a Electric Utilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Alupar Unt

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Strengths of Alupar Unt | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Alupar Unt are -

Innovation driven organization

– Alupar Unt is one of the most innovative firm in Electric Utilities sector.

Digital Transformation in Electric Utilities industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Alupar Unt digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Alupar Unt has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.

Strong track record of project management in the Electric Utilities industry

– Alupar Unt is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Ability to lead change in Electric Utilities

– Alupar Unt is one of the leading players in the Electric Utilities industry in Brazil. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Electric Utilities industry in Brazil but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Alupar Unt in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Alupar Unt in Electric Utilities industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

High brand equity

– Alupar Unt has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Alupar Unt to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Alupar Unt in the Utilities sector have low bargaining power. Alupar Unt has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Alupar Unt to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Alupar Unt comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Electric 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

– Alupar Unt 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 Electric Utilities industry. The technology infrastructure of Brazil 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.

Organizational Resilience of Alupar Unt

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Alupar Unt does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Diverse revenue streams

– Alupar Unt is present in almost all the verticals within the Electric Utilities industry. This has provided Alupar Unt 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.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Alupar Unt 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.

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Weaknesses of Alupar Unt | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Alupar Unt are -

Need for greater diversity

– Alupar Unt 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.

Skills based hiring in Electric Utilities industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Alupar Unt 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.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Alupar Unt needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Electric Utilities industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Alupar Unt can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Alupar Unt is planning to shift buying processes online.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Alupar Unt 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 Electric Utilities industry using digital technology.

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 Alupar Unt supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Alupar Unt is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Alupar Unt vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Alupar Unt is just above the Electric 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.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Alupar Unt has high operating costs in the Electric Utilities industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Alupar Unt lucrative customers.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Alupar Unt is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Electric Utilities industry, but Alupar Unt needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Alupar Unt to focus more on services in the Electric Utilities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

Lack of clear differentiation of Alupar Unt products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Alupar Unt needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Alupar Unt is one of the leading players in the Electric Utilities industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Electric Utilities industry in last five years.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Electric Utilities industry, Alupar Unt 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.

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Alupar Unt Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Alupar Unt are -

Manufacturing automation

– Alupar Unt can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Electric Utilities 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.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Alupar Unt to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Alupar Unt to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Alupar Unt 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Alupar Unt has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Electric Utilities sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Alupar Unt to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Alupar Unt to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Alupar Unt 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 Alupar Unt to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Alupar Unt 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 Electric Utilities industry.

Buying journey improvements

– Alupar Unt can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Electric 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Alupar Unt can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Alupar Unt operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Electric Utilities sector.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Electric Utilities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Alupar Unt 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. Alupar Unt 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

– Alupar Unt 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Alupar Unt 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.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Electric Utilities industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Alupar Unt can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Alupar Unt can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

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Threats Alupar Unt External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Alupar Unt are -

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.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Electric Utilities industry are lowering. It can presents Alupar Unt with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Electric Utilities sector.

Regulatory challenges

– Alupar Unt 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 Electric Utilities industry regulations.

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. Alupar Unt 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.

Increasing wage structure of Alupar Unt

– 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 Alupar Unt.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Alupar Unt 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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Alupar Unt 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 Electric Utilities industry.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Alupar Unt may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Electric Utilities sector.

Capital market disruption

– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Alupar Unt.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Alupar Unt is facing in Electric Utilities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Electric Utilities industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Alupar Unt can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Alupar Unt 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 Alupar Unt prominent markets.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Alupar Unt in Electric Utilities industry. The Electric 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Alupar Unt Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Alupar Unt 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 Alupar Unt 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 Alupar Unt 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 Alupar Unt 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 Alupar Unt needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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