Emerald Health (EMHTF) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Oil & Gas Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Emerald Health (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Emerald Health is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing commodity prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption,
geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Emerald Health can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Emerald Health, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Emerald Health 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 Emerald Health can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Emerald Health
2. Improving business portfolio management of Emerald Health
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Oil & Gas Operations sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Emerald Health
Strengths of Emerald Health | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Emerald Health are -
Analytics focus
– Emerald Health 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 Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Organizational Resilience of Emerald Health
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Emerald Health does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management in the Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Emerald Health 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 & Gas Operations
– Emerald Health is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Oil & Gas Operations industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Emerald Health in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Emerald Health in Oil & Gas Operations industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Emerald Health is present in almost all the verticals within the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This has provided Emerald Health 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Emerald Health 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 Operations industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Emerald Health have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Oil & Gas Operations industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Emerald Health digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Emerald Health 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Emerald Health has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Emerald Health to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Emerald Health to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Emerald Health 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 Emerald Health is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Emerald Health emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Emerald Health has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Emerald Health 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Emerald Health is one of the most innovative firm in Oil & Gas Operations sector.
Weaknesses of Emerald Health | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Emerald Health are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Emerald Health is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Emerald Health to provide better information regarding Oil & Gas Operations products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High dependence on Emerald Health ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Emerald Health still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Oil & Gas Operations industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Emerald Health has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Emerald Health, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Emerald Health products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Emerald Health needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Emerald Health is one of the leading players in the Oil & Gas Operations 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 Operations industry in last five years.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Emerald Health 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry using digital technology.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Emerald Health 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 Operations industry over the last five years. Emerald Health 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Emerald Health 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Emerald Health is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Oil & Gas Operations industry, but Emerald Health needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Emerald Health to focus more on services in the Oil & Gas Operations industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ less understanding of Emerald Health strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Emerald Health 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, Emerald Health needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Emerald Health Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Emerald Health are -
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Emerald Health in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. Now Emerald Health can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Emerald Health can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Emerald Health 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 & Gas Operations industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Emerald Health has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Oil & Gas Operations sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Emerald Health to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Emerald Health to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Emerald Health has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Oil & Gas Operations industry. This can help Emerald Health to build a more holistic ecosystem for Emerald Health products in the Oil & Gas Operations industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Emerald Health 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 Emerald Health 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Emerald Health 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Oil & Gas Operations industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Emerald Health 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. Emerald Health 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Emerald Health can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Emerald Health 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Emerald Health 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Emerald Health 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 Emerald Health to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Emerald Health External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Emerald Health are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Emerald Health has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Emerald Health needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
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. Emerald Health needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Emerald Health
– 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 Emerald Health.
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 Emerald Health.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Oil & Gas Operations industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Emerald Health can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Emerald Health 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.
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 Emerald Health in the Oil & Gas Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Emerald Health 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 Operations industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Emerald Health 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 & Gas Operations industry and other sectors.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Emerald Health in Oil & Gas Operations industry. The Oil & Gas Operations 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.
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 Emerald Health 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, Emerald Health 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 Emerald Health prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Emerald Health Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Emerald Health 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 Emerald Health 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 Emerald Health 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 Emerald Health 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 Emerald Health needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.