Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Enable Midstream Partners LP is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Enable Midstream Partners LP
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Enable Midstream Partners LP can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Enable Midstream Partners LP, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Enable Midstream Partners LP
2. Improving business portfolio management of Enable Midstream Partners LP
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Natural Gas Utilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Enable Midstream Partners LP
Strengths of Enable Midstream Partners LP | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Enable Midstream Partners LP are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Enable Midstream Partners LP is present in almost all the verticals within the Natural Gas Utilities industry. This has provided Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Organizational Resilience of Enable Midstream Partners LP
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Enable Midstream Partners LP does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Enable Midstream Partners LP has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Enable Midstream Partners LP staying ahead in the Natural Gas Utilities industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Enable Midstream Partners LP comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Training and development
– Enable Midstream Partners LP has one of the best training and development program in Utilities 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
– Enable Midstream Partners LP has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Natural Gas Utilities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Enable Midstream Partners LP have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Enable Midstream Partners LP has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Learning organization
- Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Enable Midstream Partners LP emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Natural Gas Utilities industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Enable Midstream Partners LP digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Analytics focus
– Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Weaknesses of Enable Midstream Partners LP | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Enable Midstream Partners LP are -
High bargaining power of channel partners in Natural Gas Utilities industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Enable Midstream Partners LP is just above the Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Enable Midstream Partners LP has some of the most successful models in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Enable Midstream Partners LP should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Enable Midstream Partners LP needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Enable Midstream Partners LP has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Natural Gas Utilities industry over the last five years. Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Enable Midstream Partners LP is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Enable Midstream Partners LP to provide better information regarding Natural Gas Utilities products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Enable Midstream Partners LP is one of the leading players in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Natural Gas Utilities industry in last five years.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Enable Midstream Partners LP is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, but Enable Midstream Partners LP needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Enable Midstream Partners LP to focus more on services in the Natural Gas Utilities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry using digital technology.
Enable Midstream Partners LP Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Enable Midstream Partners LP are -
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. Enable Midstream Partners LP can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Enable Midstream Partners LP can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Natural Gas Utilities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Enable Midstream Partners LP 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. Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Enable Midstream Partners LP has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Natural Gas Utilities industry. This can help Enable Midstream Partners LP to build a more holistic ecosystem for Enable Midstream Partners LP products in the Natural Gas Utilities industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Enable Midstream Partners LP can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Enable Midstream Partners LP 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, Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Enable Midstream Partners LP is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Enable Midstream Partners LP can utilize new technology in the field of Natural Gas Utilities industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Enable Midstream Partners LP can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Natural Gas Utilities 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Enable Midstream Partners LP in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Natural Gas Utilities industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
Threats Enable Midstream Partners LP External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Enable Midstream Partners LP are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Enable Midstream Partners LP has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Natural Gas Utilities industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Enable Midstream Partners LP needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Natural Gas Utilities industry and other sectors.
Increasing wage structure of Enable Midstream Partners LP
– 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Enable Midstream Partners LP in Natural Gas Utilities industry. The Natural Gas Utilities 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.
Environmental challenges
– Enable Midstream Partners LP 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. Enable Midstream Partners LP can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Natural Gas Utilities industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Natural Gas Utilities industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Enable Midstream Partners LP 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. Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
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 Enable Midstream Partners LP business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Enable Midstream Partners LP is facing in Natural Gas Utilities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Enable Midstream Partners LP 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.
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. Enable Midstream Partners LP needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Natural Gas Utilities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Enable Midstream Partners LP Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP 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 Enable Midstream Partners LP needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
