Duke Energy Debenture (DUKH) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Duke Energy Debenture (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Duke Energy Debenture is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, wage bills are increasing, technology disruption, increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, geopolitical disruptions,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Duke Energy Debenture
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Duke Energy Debenture can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Duke Energy Debenture, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Duke Energy Debenture 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 Duke Energy Debenture can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Duke Energy Debenture
2. Improving business portfolio management of Duke Energy Debenture
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Duke Energy Debenture
Strengths of Duke Energy Debenture | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Duke Energy Debenture are -
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Duke Energy Debenture digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Duke Energy Debenture 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.
Training and development
– Duke Energy Debenture has one of the best training and development program in 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Duke Energy Debenture in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Duke Energy Debenture 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Duke Energy Debenture has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Duke Energy Debenture to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Duke Energy Debenture to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Duke Energy Debenture comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Duke Energy Debenture in the sector have low bargaining power. Duke Energy Debenture has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Duke Energy Debenture to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Duke Energy Debenture is one of the leading players in the 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.
Learning organization
- Duke Energy Debenture 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 Duke Energy Debenture is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Duke Energy Debenture emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Duke Energy Debenture 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Duke Energy Debenture has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Duke Energy Debenture staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Duke Energy Debenture has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Duke Energy Debenture to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses of Duke Energy Debenture | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Duke Energy Debenture are -
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Duke Energy Debenture 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 industry.
High dependence on Duke Energy Debenture ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Duke Energy Debenture still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Duke Energy Debenture has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Duke Energy Debenture 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Duke Energy Debenture strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Duke Energy Debenture don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Duke Energy Debenture needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Duke Energy Debenture has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Lack of clear differentiation of Duke Energy Debenture products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Duke Energy Debenture needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Duke Energy Debenture has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Duke Energy Debenture lucrative customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Duke Energy Debenture has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Duke Energy Debenture should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Duke Energy Debenture is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Duke Energy Debenture to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Duke Energy Debenture is just above the 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.
Duke Energy Debenture Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Duke Energy Debenture are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Duke Energy Debenture 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 Duke Energy Debenture in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Duke Energy Debenture 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 industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Duke Energy Debenture in the industry. Now Duke Energy Debenture can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Duke Energy Debenture 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.
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. Duke Energy Debenture can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Duke Energy Debenture can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Duke Energy Debenture can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Duke Energy Debenture operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Duke Energy Debenture is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Duke Energy Debenture can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Duke Energy Debenture can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Duke Energy Debenture has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Duke Energy Debenture to build a more holistic ecosystem for Duke Energy Debenture products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Duke Energy Debenture 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. Duke Energy Debenture 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Duke Energy Debenture can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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.
Threats Duke Energy Debenture External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Duke Energy Debenture are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Duke Energy Debenture can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Duke Energy Debenture
– 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 Duke Energy Debenture.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Duke Energy Debenture with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Duke Energy Debenture 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 industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Duke Energy Debenture 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 industry regulations.
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. Duke Energy Debenture needs to understand the core reasons impacting the 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, Duke Energy Debenture 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 Duke Energy Debenture prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Duke Energy Debenture 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.
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 Duke Energy Debenture.
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 Duke Energy Debenture in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
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.
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 Duke Energy Debenture business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Duke Energy Debenture Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Duke Energy Debenture 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 Duke Energy Debenture 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 Duke Energy Debenture 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 Duke Energy Debenture 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 Duke Energy Debenture needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.