SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for EnergyO Solutions (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , EnergyO Solutions is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
wage bills are increasing, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of EnergyO Solutions
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that EnergyO Solutions can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the EnergyO Solutions, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which EnergyO Solutions 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 EnergyO Solutions can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of EnergyO Solutions
2. Improving business portfolio management of EnergyO Solutions
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 EnergyO Solutions
Strengths of EnergyO Solutions | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of EnergyO Solutions are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of EnergyO Solutions 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.
Organizational Resilience of EnergyO Solutions
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing EnergyO Solutions does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Successful track record of launching new products
– EnergyO Solutions has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. EnergyO Solutions 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.
High brand equity
– EnergyO Solutions has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled EnergyO Solutions to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– EnergyO Solutions 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– EnergyO Solutions has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – EnergyO Solutions staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– EnergyO Solutions 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– EnergyO Solutions has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of EnergyO Solutions have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– EnergyO Solutions is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Diverse revenue streams
– EnergyO Solutions is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided EnergyO Solutions 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of EnergyO Solutions in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of EnergyO Solutions in the sector have low bargaining power. EnergyO Solutions has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps EnergyO Solutions to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of EnergyO Solutions | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of EnergyO Solutions are -
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at EnergyO Solutions 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.
High dependence on EnergyO Solutions ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of EnergyO Solutions still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though EnergyO Solutions has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of EnergyO Solutions is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but EnergyO Solutions needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help EnergyO Solutions to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of EnergyO Solutions products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, EnergyO Solutions needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that EnergyO Solutions needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at EnergyO Solutions can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as EnergyO Solutions is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, EnergyO Solutions 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 industry using digital technology.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at EnergyO Solutions, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. EnergyO Solutions has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of EnergyO Solutions, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of EnergyO Solutions supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, EnergyO Solutions is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left EnergyO Solutions vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, EnergyO Solutions 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, EnergyO Solutions needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
EnergyO Solutions Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of EnergyO Solutions are -
Loyalty marketing
– EnergyO Solutions 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– EnergyO Solutions can develop new processes and procedures in 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.
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. EnergyO Solutions can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, EnergyO Solutions 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 EnergyO Solutions to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for EnergyO Solutions 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.
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. EnergyO Solutions can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– EnergyO Solutions has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled EnergyO Solutions to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help EnergyO Solutions to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help EnergyO Solutions to increase its market reach. EnergyO Solutions 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 industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. EnergyO Solutions 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. EnergyO Solutions 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for EnergyO Solutions 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 EnergyO Solutions to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, EnergyO Solutions is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. EnergyO Solutions 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.
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 EnergyO Solutions 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at EnergyO Solutions 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 industry.
Threats EnergyO Solutions External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of EnergyO Solutions are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, EnergyO Solutions 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 EnergyO Solutions prominent markets.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, EnergyO Solutions may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents EnergyO Solutions with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– EnergyO Solutions has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, EnergyO Solutions needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
Environmental challenges
– EnergyO Solutions 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. EnergyO Solutions can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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. EnergyO Solutions needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– EnergyO Solutions 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.
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 EnergyO Solutions business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that EnergyO Solutions is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for EnergyO Solutions in industry. The 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on EnergyO Solutions 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 industry and other sectors.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of EnergyO Solutions Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at EnergyO Solutions 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 EnergyO Solutions 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 EnergyO Solutions 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 EnergyO Solutions 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 EnergyO Solutions needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
