SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Bayside Corporation (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Bayside Corporation is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, technology disruption, wage bills are increasing, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Bayside Corporation
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Bayside Corporation can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Bayside Corporation, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Bayside Corporation 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 Bayside Corporation can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Bayside Corporation
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bayside Corporation
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Oil & Gas - Integrated sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Bayside Corporation
Strengths of Bayside Corporation | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Bayside Corporation are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Bayside Corporation 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)
– Bayside Corporation has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Bayside Corporation staying ahead in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Bayside Corporation
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Bayside Corporation does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Bayside Corporation has one of the best training and development program in Energy 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.
Learning organization
- Bayside Corporation 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 Bayside Corporation is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Bayside Corporation emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– Bayside Corporation is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Bayside Corporation has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Bayside Corporation to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Bayside Corporation 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 - Integrated industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Bayside Corporation have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Bayside Corporation is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Bayside Corporation in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Bayside Corporation has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Bayside Corporation to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Bayside Corporation in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Bayside Corporation digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Bayside Corporation 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.
Weaknesses of Bayside Corporation | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Bayside Corporation are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Bayside Corporation is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Bayside Corporation to provide better information regarding Oil & Gas - Integrated products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Bayside Corporation products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Bayside Corporation needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Bayside Corporation is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry, but Bayside Corporation needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Bayside Corporation to focus more on services in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Need for greater diversity
– Bayside Corporation 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Bayside Corporation needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Bayside Corporation can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Bayside Corporation is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Bayside Corporation 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 - Integrated industry over the last five years. Bayside Corporation 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Bayside Corporation needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Bayside Corporation 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 Oil & Gas - Integrated industry.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Bayside Corporation is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry in last five years.
High dependence on Bayside Corporation ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Bayside Corporation still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Bayside Corporation has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ less understanding of Bayside Corporation strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Bayside Corporation 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.
Bayside Corporation Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Bayside Corporation are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Bayside Corporation can develop new processes and procedures in Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Bayside Corporation 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Bayside Corporation 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 Bayside Corporation to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Bayside Corporation can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Bayside Corporation 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 Bayside Corporation to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Bayside Corporation to increase its market reach. Bayside Corporation 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 Oil & Gas - Integrated industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Bayside Corporation 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. Bayside Corporation 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Bayside Corporation has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Oil & Gas - Integrated sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Bayside Corporation to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Bayside Corporation 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, Bayside Corporation can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Bayside Corporation operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Oil & Gas - Integrated sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Bayside Corporation 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Bayside Corporation is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Bayside Corporation can utilize new technology in the field of Oil & Gas - Integrated industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, 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 Bayside Corporation 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Bayside Corporation in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. Now Bayside Corporation can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Bayside Corporation External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Bayside Corporation are -
Increasing wage structure of Bayside Corporation
– 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 Bayside Corporation.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Bayside Corporation is facing in Oil & Gas - Integrated sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Bayside Corporation business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Bayside Corporation 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 Bayside Corporation prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Bayside Corporation 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Bayside Corporation in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. The Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Bayside Corporation 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 - Integrated industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Bayside Corporation has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Bayside Corporation needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Oil & Gas - Integrated 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Oil & Gas - Integrated industry are lowering. It can presents Bayside Corporation with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Oil & Gas - Integrated sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Oil & Gas - Integrated industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Bayside Corporation can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Bayside Corporation 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.
Environmental challenges
– Bayside Corporation 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. Bayside Corporation can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Oil & Gas - Integrated industry.
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 Bayside Corporation in the Oil & Gas - Integrated sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bayside Corporation Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Bayside Corporation 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 Bayside Corporation 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 Bayside Corporation 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 Bayside Corporation 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 Bayside Corporation needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.