Avrupa Minerals (AVPMF) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Avrupa Minerals (United States)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Avrupa Minerals is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Avrupa Minerals

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Avrupa Minerals can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Avrupa Minerals, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Avrupa Minerals 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 Avrupa Minerals can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Avrupa Minerals
2. Improving business portfolio management of Avrupa Minerals
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Avrupa Minerals

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Strengths of Avrupa Minerals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Avrupa Minerals are -

Learning organization

- Avrupa Minerals 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 Avrupa Minerals is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Avrupa Minerals emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Avrupa Minerals in Metal Mining industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Avrupa Minerals 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.

Ability to lead change in Metal Mining

– Avrupa Minerals is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Metal Mining industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Avrupa Minerals in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Digital Transformation in Metal Mining industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Avrupa Minerals digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Avrupa Minerals 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.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Avrupa Minerals has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Metal Mining industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Avrupa Minerals have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Organizational Resilience of Avrupa Minerals

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Avrupa Minerals 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 Metal Mining industry

– Avrupa Minerals has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Avrupa Minerals to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Metal Mining industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Avrupa Minerals to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Diverse revenue streams

– Avrupa Minerals is present in almost all the verticals within the Metal Mining industry. This has provided Avrupa Minerals 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.

High brand equity

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

Analytics focus

– Avrupa Minerals 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 Metal Mining industry. The technology infrastructure of United States 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Avrupa Minerals has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Avrupa Minerals staying ahead in the Metal Mining industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

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Weaknesses of Avrupa Minerals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Avrupa Minerals are -

Increasing silos among functional specialists

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

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Avrupa Minerals has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Metal Mining industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

High operating costs

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

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Metal Mining industry, Avrupa Minerals 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.

Skills based hiring in Metal Mining industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Avrupa Minerals 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.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Avrupa Minerals is just above the Metal Mining 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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Avrupa Minerals 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 Metal Mining industry using digital technology.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Avrupa Minerals, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Metal Mining 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.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Avrupa Minerals has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Metal Mining industry over the last five years. Avrupa Minerals 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.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Avrupa Minerals has some of the most successful models in the Metal Mining industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Avrupa Minerals should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

Lack of clear differentiation of Avrupa Minerals products

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

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Avrupa Minerals Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Avrupa Minerals are -

Leveraging digital technologies

– Avrupa Minerals 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.

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 Avrupa Minerals 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.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Avrupa Minerals has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Metal Mining industry. This can help Avrupa Minerals to build a more holistic ecosystem for Avrupa Minerals products in the Metal Mining industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Avrupa Minerals in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Metal Mining industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

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. Avrupa Minerals can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Avrupa Minerals to increase its market reach. Avrupa Minerals 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.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Metal Mining industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Avrupa Minerals 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. Avrupa Minerals 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.

Finding new ways to collaborate

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

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Avrupa Minerals 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 Metal Mining industry.

Loyalty marketing

– Avrupa Minerals 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.

Increase in government spending

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

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Avrupa Minerals 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.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Avrupa Minerals is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Avrupa Minerals can utilize new technology in the field of Metal Mining industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

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Threats Avrupa Minerals External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Avrupa Minerals are -

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Avrupa Minerals 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 Metal Mining industry.

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. Avrupa Minerals 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.

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 Avrupa Minerals in the Metal Mining sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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. Avrupa Minerals needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Avrupa Minerals 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 Avrupa Minerals prominent markets.

Environmental challenges

– Avrupa Minerals 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. Avrupa Minerals can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Metal Mining industry.

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

– Avrupa Minerals 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.

Learning curve for new practices

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

Barriers of entry lowering

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

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Avrupa Minerals has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Metal Mining industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Avrupa Minerals needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Metal Mining 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.

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 Avrupa Minerals.

Easy access to finance

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

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Avrupa Minerals Template, Example

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

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