Cal Dive (CDVIQ) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Oil Well Services & Equipment
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Cal Dive (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Cal Dive is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing, increasing transportation and logistics costs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Cal Dive can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cal Dive, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Cal Dive
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cal Dive
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Oil Well Services & Equipment sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Cal Dive
Strengths of Cal Dive | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cal Dive are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Cal Dive has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Cal Dive has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry
– Cal Dive has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Cal Dive to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Cal Dive to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Cal Dive digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Cal Dive 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Cal Dive is one of the most innovative firm in Oil Well Services & Equipment sector.
Learning organization
- Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Cal Dive emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Cal Dive 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.
High brand equity
– Cal Dive has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Cal Dive to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Cal Dive
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Cal Dive does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Cal Dive has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Cal Dive staying ahead in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry
– Cal Dive is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to lead change in Oil Well Services & Equipment
– Cal Dive is one of the leading players in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Cal Dive in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Cal Dive has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Oil Well Services & Equipment industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Cal Dive have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Cal Dive | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Cal Dive are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Cal Dive is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry, but Cal Dive needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Cal Dive to focus more on services in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ less understanding of Cal Dive strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Cal Dive 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Cal Dive 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Cal Dive has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Cal Dive is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Cal Dive to provide better information regarding Oil Well Services & Equipment products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Cal Dive is one of the leading players in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry in last five years.
Lack of clear differentiation of Cal Dive products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Cal Dive needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Cal Dive 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 Well Services & Equipment industry.
High dependence on Cal Dive ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Cal Dive still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Cal Dive has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Cal Dive needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Cal Dive has some of the most successful models in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Cal Dive should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Cal Dive Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Cal Dive are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Cal Dive 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 Well Services & Equipment industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Cal Dive 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Cal Dive is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Cal Dive can utilize new technology in the field of Oil Well Services & Equipment industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cal Dive 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. Cal Dive 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Cal Dive in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry. Now Cal Dive can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Cal Dive 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Cal Dive can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Oil Well Services & Equipment 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Cal Dive can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Oil Well Services & Equipment 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.
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 Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry. This can help Cal Dive to build a more holistic ecosystem for Cal Dive products in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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, Cal Dive can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Cal Dive operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Oil Well Services & Equipment sector.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Cal Dive can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Cal Dive External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Cal Dive 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.
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 Cal Dive.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Oil Well Services & Equipment industry are lowering. It can presents Cal Dive with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Oil Well Services & Equipment sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Cal Dive can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Cal Dive 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. Cal Dive can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Oil Well Services & Equipment 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. Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive in the Oil Well Services & Equipment sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Cal Dive
– 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 Cal Dive.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Cal Dive in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry. The Oil Well Services & Equipment 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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cal Dive is facing in Oil Well Services & Equipment sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Cal Dive 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 Well Services & Equipment industry and other sectors.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Cal Dive may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Oil Well Services & Equipment sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cal Dive Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive 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 Cal Dive needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.