RANDON PART PN (RAPT4) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Railroads
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for RANDON PART PN (Brazil)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , RANDON PART PN is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, increasing commodity prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, 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 RANDON PART PN can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the RANDON PART PN, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which RANDON PART PN 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 RANDON PART PN can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of RANDON PART PN
2. Improving business portfolio management of RANDON PART PN
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Brazil
4. Making a Railroads sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of RANDON PART PN
Strengths of RANDON PART PN | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of RANDON PART PN are -
Innovation driven organization
– RANDON PART PN is one of the most innovative firm in Railroads sector.
Training and development
– RANDON PART PN has one of the best training and development program in Transportation 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that RANDON PART PN 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.
Analytics focus
– RANDON PART PN 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 Railroads 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– RANDON PART PN is one of the leading players in the Railroads industry in Brazil. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Brazil. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management in the Railroads industry
– RANDON PART PN is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– RANDON PART PN has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – RANDON PART PN staying ahead in the Railroads 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 RANDON PART PN in the Transportation sector have low bargaining power. RANDON PART PN has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps RANDON PART PN to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- RANDON PART PN 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 RANDON PART PN is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at RANDON PART PN emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– RANDON PART PN is present in almost all the verticals within the Railroads industry. This has provided RANDON PART PN 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– RANDON PART PN has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Railroads industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of RANDON PART PN have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the RANDON PART PN 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.
Weaknesses of RANDON PART PN | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of RANDON PART PN are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, RANDON PART PN has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Railroads industry over the last five years. RANDON PART PN 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Railroads industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Brazil, RANDON PART PN is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Railroads industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, RANDON PART PN 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 Railroads industry using digital technology.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, RANDON PART PN is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help RANDON PART PN to provide better information regarding Railroads 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 RANDON PART PN needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Railroads industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at RANDON PART PN can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as RANDON PART PN is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ less understanding of RANDON PART PN strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of RANDON PART PN 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Brazil, RANDON PART PN needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on RANDON PART PN ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of RANDON PART PN still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Railroads industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though RANDON PART PN has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
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 RANDON PART PN supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, RANDON PART PN is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left RANDON PART PN vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, RANDON PART PN has high operating costs in the Railroads industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract RANDON PART PN lucrative customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of RANDON PART PN is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Railroads industry, but RANDON PART PN needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help RANDON PART PN to focus more on services in the Railroads industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
RANDON PART PN Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of RANDON PART PN are -
Buying journey improvements
– RANDON PART PN can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Railroads 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of RANDON PART PN has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Railroads industry. This can help RANDON PART PN to build a more holistic ecosystem for RANDON PART PN products in the Railroads industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects RANDON PART PN can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. RANDON PART PN can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– RANDON PART PN 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, RANDON PART PN is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. RANDON PART PN can utilize new technology in the field of Railroads industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– RANDON PART PN can develop new processes and procedures in Railroads industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Railroads industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. RANDON PART PN 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. RANDON PART PN 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, RANDON PART PN 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 RANDON PART PN 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– RANDON PART PN 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for RANDON PART PN in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Railroads industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Manufacturing automation
– RANDON PART PN can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Railroads 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.
Threats RANDON PART PN External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of RANDON PART PN are -
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. RANDON PART PN 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– RANDON PART PN 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 Railroads industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on RANDON PART PN 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 Railroads industry and other sectors.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, RANDON PART PN 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 RANDON PART PN prominent markets.
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. RANDON PART PN needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Railroads industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, RANDON PART PN may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Railroads sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that RANDON PART PN is facing in Railroads sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for RANDON PART PN in Railroads industry. The Railroads industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Increasing wage structure of RANDON PART PN
– 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 RANDON PART PN.
Environmental challenges
– RANDON PART PN 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. RANDON PART PN can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Railroads industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– RANDON PART PN 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 RANDON PART PN business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of RANDON PART PN Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at RANDON PART PN 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 RANDON PART PN 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 RANDON PART PN 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 RANDON PART PN 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 RANDON PART PN needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
