Alamo Energy Corp (ALME) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Oil & Gas Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Alamo Energy Corp (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Alamo Energy Corp is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Alamo Energy Corp
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Alamo Energy Corp can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Alamo Energy Corp, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Alamo Energy Corp 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 Alamo Energy Corp can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Alamo Energy Corp
2. Improving business portfolio management of Alamo Energy Corp
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Oil & Gas Operations sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Alamo Energy Corp
Strengths of Alamo Energy Corp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Alamo Energy Corp are -
Digital Transformation in Oil & Gas Operations industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Alamo Energy Corp digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Alamo Energy Corp 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.
Ability to lead change in Oil & Gas Operations
– Alamo Energy Corp is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Alamo Energy Corp in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Alamo Energy Corp is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Alamo Energy Corp
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Alamo Energy Corp does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Alamo Energy Corp has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Alamo Energy Corp to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Alamo Energy Corp to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Alamo Energy Corp 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Alamo Energy Corp has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Alamo Energy Corp staying ahead in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Alamo Energy Corp 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 Alamo Energy Corp is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Alamo Energy Corp emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Alamo Energy Corp in Oil & Gas Operations industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Alamo Energy Corp in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Alamo Energy Corp has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Alamo Energy Corp to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Alamo Energy Corp comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Alamo Energy Corp has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Oil & Gas Operations industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Alamo Energy Corp have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Alamo Energy Corp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Alamo Energy Corp are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Alamo Energy Corp is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Alamo Energy Corp to provide better information regarding Oil & Gas Operations products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Alamo Energy Corp, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Oil & Gas Operations 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 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 Alamo Energy Corp supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Alamo Energy Corp is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Alamo Energy Corp vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High dependence on Alamo Energy Corp ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Alamo Energy Corp still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Oil & Gas Operations industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Alamo Energy Corp has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Alamo Energy Corp has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Oil & Gas Operations industry over the last five years. Alamo Energy Corp 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Oil & Gas Operations industry, Alamo Energy Corp 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Alamo Energy Corp has high operating costs in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Alamo Energy Corp lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Alamo Energy Corp, in the dynamic environment of Oil & Gas Operations industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Alamo Energy Corp 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 United States, Alamo Energy Corp needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Alamo Energy Corp is just above the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Alamo Energy Corp 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.
Alamo Energy Corp Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Alamo Energy Corp are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Alamo Energy Corp to increase its market reach. Alamo Energy Corp 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Alamo Energy Corp 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 Alamo Energy Corp 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
– Alamo Energy Corp 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
– Alamo Energy Corp 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Alamo Energy Corp in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. Now Alamo Energy Corp can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Alamo Energy Corp 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Alamo Energy Corp in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Oil & Gas Operations industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Alamo Energy Corp can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Alamo Energy Corp 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Alamo Energy Corp 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
– Alamo Energy Corp has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Oil & Gas Operations sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Alamo Energy Corp to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Alamo Energy Corp 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, Alamo Energy Corp can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Alamo Energy Corp operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Oil & Gas Operations sector.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Alamo Energy Corp 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Threats Alamo Energy Corp External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Alamo Energy Corp are -
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Alamo Energy Corp 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
– Alamo Energy Corp 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Oil & Gas Operations industry are lowering. It can presents Alamo Energy Corp with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Oil & Gas Operations sector.
Increasing wage structure of Alamo Energy Corp
– 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 Alamo Energy Corp.
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. Alamo Energy Corp 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Alamo Energy Corp 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry and other sectors.
Regulatory challenges
– Alamo Energy Corp 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry regulations.
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 Alamo Energy Corp.
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. Alamo Energy Corp needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Alamo Energy Corp business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Alamo Energy Corp in the Oil & Gas Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Alamo Energy Corp has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Alamo Energy Corp needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Alamo Energy Corp Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Alamo Energy Corp 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 Alamo Energy Corp 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 Alamo Energy Corp 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 Alamo Energy Corp 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 Alamo Energy Corp needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.